this post was submitted on 21 Aug 2023
3155 points (98.3% liked)
Asklemmy
43956 readers
949 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy ๐
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
- [email protected]: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
epistemology is a big topic and we're clearly operating on some contradictory premises/priors but I'll continue to engage in good faith.
I think I'd consider the following as evidence of an event: photos/video, eyewitness testimony, and measurement data; each provided with provenance/traceability through the entire chain of reporting. Each reporting agent's credibility on the topic plays a role in weighing the evidence.
Finally the believability (another big term) of the claim itself plays a important role in how much evidence is necessary for me to believe it. Here's where I put on my internet atheist hat and reference the "Sagan Standard": Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof and it's corollary: a claim asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
The reason I asked is an outbreak is usually "in the shadows" until the community of medical professionals confirm it. And it's not this I intend to reference though, but the fact many would be quick to jump at one country falling under the definition but not another (as well as individual states, as different states handled it differently). However we define evidence (even witnesses are hard, many people will say people dying in front of you wouldn't be proof unless indicated by professionals), we'd have to apply it universally; the time period between the first suspected patient zero to the first confirmed case to the last confirmed case should be treated by the same rules in both countries, and in all countries. Depending on the standard, either you have both countries faring well or both countries not faring well.
Given North Korea is more private, that makes the latter the heavier choice, at least if you ask me.