Re:John McAfee found dead in Spanish jail after court approv...
by rcstank on Wednesday June 23, 2021 @11:18PM
(#27613546)
What about people who can’t prove a negative but truly are innocent? If you can’t guarantee that 100% can prove a negative, then innocent people would be convicted.
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Re:John McAfee found dead in Spanish jail after court approv...
by fatbird on Wednesday June 23, 2021 @11:26PM
(#27613607)
Innocent people do get convicted. Some negatives can't be proven, just like some positive assertions can't be proven.
Re:John McAfee found dead in Spanish jail after court approv...
by ganafagol on Thursday June 24, 2021 @06:13AM
(#27615737)
What about people who can't prove a positive but truly are guilty?
In this fuzzy form of what "positive" and "negative" are, there is a symmetry that allows all arguments you have for one "side" to be easily flipped. Each positive is somebody elses negative. Not guilty? Not innocent? With that line of reasong you could not ever prove anything since it's "the negative" of something else.
Mathematical logic has a solution to this though. You may want to check out constructive logic. That's where the statement "you can't prove a negative" is reasonable but has very specific meaning.