this post was submitted on 03 Apr 2025
54 points (89.7% liked)
Asklemmy
47202 readers
1485 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy π
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 6 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
By simple analogy. You can prove that there are white crows by finding a single white crow, but to prove that there are no white crows you must conduct an exhaustive search of every corner of the earth and never find a single one and somehow be absolutely certain that you didn't miss one somewhere.
The only way to be absolutely certain that you didn't miss something is to be able to look everywhere all at once, otherwise a white crow might evade your notice, and that's impossible.
As such all you can say is there probably aren't any white crows because we have lots of experience seeing crows and there has been no evidence of one yet.
spoiler
Plenty of crows with albinism exist! Do a quick search for images -albino crow.https://www.nsnews.com/local-news/rare-albino-crow-rescued-in-north-vancouver-3126073
It's just an example man.
Similar to the argument Intelligent Design (anti evolutionists) use. They always point to fossil gaps and say "Well, what happened there?" You have no control over what gets fossilized and where you can find them and there will always be a gap somewhere. "Well there is a gap on Tuesday, 67,000,000 BC!" There is no possible way to fill in every imaginable gap with physical evidence vs seeing patterns and development across those gaps.
This is a very good analogy!
Although to be pedantic, there are white crows; there was one living in my neighborhood some years back.
It's just an example. Mentally edit it to polka-dotted hippopotamuses if it makes ya happy. ;)