You said: Anything is possible, but that is no basis for a belief.
Anything is possible, but that is no basis for a belief. For the possible to become the probable requires that it fit in with other knowledge, be sensible and have decent supporting evidence. Much of this is judgment. Way-out things, even with considerable evidence, are not acceptable without truly convincing evidence and good refutation of alternatives.
Basically whenever presented with something where no explanation is available except something extreme, don't think just because more likely things have been ruled out that the extreme must be the truth. Instead, wait until there is evidence adequate to overcome the extreme nature of the explanation. Put it aside as unexplained. Argument that consists of nothing more than refuting alternatives is not enough.
Claude responded: This is a well-articulated epistemological position.
This is a well-articulated epistemological position. A few thoughts on what makes it coherent and where the interesting tensions lie:
What you're describing has a name — roughly, it's the principle of proportionality of belief to evidence, most associated with Hume: "A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence." Carl Sagan's "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" is the popular version. You're refining it usefully.
The logical fallacy you're targeting is sometimes called the "argument from elimination" or a misuse of inference to the best explanation — where "best available" gets conflated with "good enough to accept." Sherlock Holmes is the cultural villain here: "when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth." That's actually bad epistemology dressed up as rigor. It ignores the possibility that the true explanation simply hasn't been found yet.
"Put it aside as unexplained" is genuinely underrated. There's a strong psychological pull toward closure — an unexplained thing feels like a gap that demands filling. But intellectual honesty sometimes requires sitting with genuine uncertainty rather than reaching for a dramatic explanation just because mundane ones have failed. "I don't know" is a legitimate epistemic state, not a stepping stone that forces you toward the next available answer.
Where the judgment gets hard:
- How extreme is "extreme"? This is calibration, not logic, and reasonable people differ.
- Some things that were once considered wild are now orthodox — continental drift, germ theory, heliocentrism. The history of science includes cases where the "extreme" explanation was right and the conservative resistance was wrong.
- But that same history is swamped by cases where the extreme explanation was simply wrong. The base rate of extraordinary claims being true is low.
The key asymmetry you're pointing to is that the cost of premature belief in something false is often higher than the cost of temporarily withholding belief in something true. Patience is cheap. Bad beliefs compound.
It's a disciplined, mature position — the willingness to leave things genuinely open rather than forcing resolution.
You said: The problem you point out is why I mentioned the need for judgment.
The problem you point out is why I mentioned the need for judgment. Wegner was not believed because the theory was missing needed mechanism rather than it outré nature.
Claude responded: You're right, and that's a sharper distinction than I made.
You're right, and that's a sharper distinction than I made. The resistance to Wegener wasn't simply conservatism about an extreme claim — it was scientifically grounded skepticism. The continents visibly fit together, the fossil correlations were real, the evidence was substantial. What was missing was a plausible physical mechanism by which continents could actually move through oceanic crust. That's not irrationality — that's correct scientific reasoning. A phenomenon without a workable mechanism is genuinely incomplete, and skepticism was warranted on those specific grounds.
When plate tectonics and seafloor spreading supplied the mechanism, resistance largely collapsed fairly quickly. That's the system working properly.
This actually sharpens your original point rather than undermining it. The relevant question when evaluating an extraordinary claim isn't just "how extreme is it?" but a more structured set of questions:
- Is the evidence itself solid, or is it ambiguous?
- Is there a coherent mechanism, or just a pattern demanding explanation?
- Have alternatives been genuinely ruled out, or just not thought of yet?
- Does it fit with surrounding knowledge, or require tearing up too much else?
Wegener had good evidence but a missing mechanism. Many fringe claims have neither. Some claims have apparent evidence but poor fit with surrounding knowledge. These are different situations calling for different responses, and collapsing them all into "extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence" loses that resolution.
The judgment you're describing is essentially knowing which of those deficits is doing the work in any particular case.
You said: I notice that Holmes, a fictional character, is quoted more often than Sagan.
I notice that Holmes, a fictional character, is quoted more often than Sagan.
Claude responded: That's an amusing observation, and probably revealing.
That's an amusing observation, and probably revealing. A few reasons it might be true:
Holmes is more quotable. The line is crisp, dramatic, and sounds conclusive. Sagan's version, while punchier than Hume's, is still a policy statement. Holmes sounds like he's doing something — arriving at truth through iron logic. It has narrative satisfaction built in.
Holmes carries an aura of infallibility that Sagan doesn't. Sagan is a scientist who explicitly embraces uncertainty and error. Holmes never says "I don't know." People quoting Holmes are often doing so precisely because they want to project that same certainty — they've eliminated alternatives, therefore they've arrived. The quote flatters the user.
This means it's often quoted in exactly the situations you're warning against. It's deployed as a rhetorical move to justify accepting an extreme conclusion after mundane alternatives have been dismissed. The fictional detective's authority is borrowed to shut down further questioning rather than open it up.
Sagan's version actually demands more of the speaker — it raises the question of whether the evidence is extraordinary enough, which is uncomfortable if you've already decided the answer. Holmes lets you skip that.
There's something fitting about the fact that a line encoding flawed epistemology belongs to a fictional character who never actually had to be right — Conan Doyle just wrote it that way. Real investigators working real problems can't arrange the clues so conveniently.
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