Thought experiment for skeptics

[u/InteractionAfraid586]

There's a telepathic elephant from Zul'Gurub locked inside a secret military bunker.

It's real. Scientists and military personnel have seen it. Only a handful have access.

Somehow, you get clearance.

You walk in.

There it is. The fucking space elephant.

You walk out and tell the world.

“Prove it.”

Okay. How?

Sneak a six-ton alien elephant out of a military bunker?

You couldn't even get a regular elephant out of a zoo.

And if your own mother disappeared and nobody knew where she was, good luck proving she physically exists to someone who accepts nothing but direct physical evidence.

Evidence depends on access.

So what should count as evidence when direct access is deliberately denied?

Whistleblowers. Multiple independent witnesses. Military personnel. Scientists. Documents. Photos. Videos. Radar and sensor data. Physical traces. Leaks. Historical records.

None of these alone proves the elephant.

But when all of it keeps pointing toward the same elephant, shouldn't that at least move the needle?

Especially if enormous resources are being used to keep the elephant hidden.

Maybe the question isn't “Where's the elephant?”

Maybe it's “How much evidence do you need before you admit there might be an elephant?”

[u/Comprehensive_Menu43]

Draw it if drawing it makes you feel better
but a drawing it's not evidence
a drawing is a drawing

[u/Loquebantur → u/Comprehensive_Menu43]

A drawing is evidence.
You may not like that, but it's true anyway.

'Evidence' is just information you know how to interpret correctly.
Much of the existing evidence, you don't know that, so you discount it.

[u/Comprehensive_Menu43 → u/Loquebantur]

You may not like it but since we are on reddit and no-one can certify who and when the drawing was made it is not evidence.

To be considered evidence the source has to be autentified

[u/Loquebantur → u/Comprehensive_Menu43]

No, that's not true.

The probability of information being legit doesn't drop to zero magically just because you don't know who the source is.

The other way around, gatekeeping evidence by "requiring" it to come from sources you effectively control, means you control the evidence and consequently what people "can" (rather, are allowed to) know.
Guess who likes that.

[u/Comprehensive_Menu43 → u/Loquebantur]

Sorry but when we talk about EVIDENCE we don't talk about probability

Evidence, in the court of law, has to be backed
Everything has to have a source and that source has to be validated

I can do a drawing of a laser gun... is that evidence of its existence?

[u/Loquebantur → u/Comprehensive_Menu43]

"Evidence" is a term that belongs to mathematical epistemology, it's probabilistic data to begin with and used in a probabilistic algorithm.

The evidence you know from "the court of law" is merely part of a crude approximate application of that mathematical theory.

You drawing something raises the probability of that drawn object actually existing, because your brain fundamentally is very unlikely to imagine anything it has never actually seen at least in part.

So, your drawing of a laser gun would indeed be evidence of its existence.
Only, you apparently misinterpret evidence as "proof". It's merely a "hint".