In many discussions I'm pulled back to the distinction between not-guilty and innocent as a way to demonstrate how the burden of proof works and what the true default position should be in any given argument. A lot of people seem to not have any problem seeing the distinction, but many intelligent people for some reason don't see it.
In this article I explain why the distinction exists and why it matters, in particular why it matters in real-life scenarios, especially when people try to shift the burden of proof.
Essentially, in my view the universe we are talking about is {uncertain,guilty,innocent}, therefore not-guilty is guilty', which is {uncertain,innocent}. Therefore innocent ⇒ not-guilty, but not-guilty ⇏ innocent.
When O. J. Simpson was acquitted, that doesn’t mean he was found innocent, it means the prosecution could not prove his guilt beyond reasonable doubt. He was found not-guilty, which is not the same as innocent. It very well could be that the jury found the truth of the matter uncertain.
This notion has implications in many real-life scenarios when people want to shift the burden of proof if you reject a claim when it's not substantiated. They wrongly assume you claim their claim is false (equivalent to innocent), when in truth all you are doing is staying in the default position (uncertain).
Rejecting the claim that a god exists is not the same as claim a god doesn't exist: it doesn't require a burden of proof because it's the default position. Agnosticism is the default position. The burden of proof is on the people making the claim.
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Notes -
One example is the effects of climate change. In my view the consequences, positive and negative, are sufficiently uncertain that one cannot sign the summed effect. That doesn't mean I don't believe that climate change is bad, it means I don't know — and suspect nobody knows, although obviously many people think they do.
I agree. Climate change is one of the areas I'm most skeptical about. I believe that if true it's one of the most important issues of our time, and I've seen evidence that climate change is indeed happening, and it's indeed caused by human activity, but evidence isn't proof.
I have also seen enough evidence to be skeptical about the amount of damage human activity is actually causing--as opposed to random fluctuations. And also to be skeptical about the irreversible damage, for which there's evidence that it's actually reversing.
So my conclusion so far is the default position: I don't know.
The primary issue is that the climate is sensitive to many inputs, and certain inputs are rare but have outsized effect if they do occur, i.e. a major volcanic eruption, or certain types of solar activity.
So for a given period humans could be the major input and the trend could be towards warming. But then a single major event can override that all at once.
This directly implies that our models about future climate could be completely thrown off by a single event, and thus we could take extensive efforts to mitigate our own input and it might mean utterly nothing due to a natural occurrence.
This naturally generates irreducible uncertainty about the future, which complicates planning.
Yes, but the true danger is certainty. Both people in the pro and anti camps make absolute statements like "the world is going to end in ten years" and "climate has always changed", and these statements can't possibly be rationally substantiated in such a complex system.
The only path forward is epistemic humility, and both camps seem to lack it.
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