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 -
What is evidence? Is seeing a video recording of the defendant shooting his wife evidence? Recordings can be faked, even if it's unlikely.
I agree with the rest of what you said, that people who predict things will often be wrong.
What's stopping me from being skeptical about everything, even in the face of stuff you call "evidence"? Maybe you & your blog are just a GPT bot. Why should I just assume I'm talking to a human?
Which is why evidence should not be considered proof. People often confuse the two, for example in the aphorism "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" which is incorrect: it is evidence of absence, it's just not proof.
You shouldn't. Why do you need to know that I'm a human?
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