this post was submitted on 03 Apr 2025
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[โ€“] libra00@lemmy.world 66 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (6 children)

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.

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.

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