[TwoPhonesOneKid]

> no there aren't. there just aren't.

You do realize we all know it's impossible to have any degree of certainty in asserting the non-existence of something, right?

[voxic11]

You can always turn a claim into a logically equivalent claim of the non-existence of any counterexamples.

    “For every instance, e equals mc²”

is logically equivalent to

    “There is no instance where e does not equal mc².”

That combined with your belief that claims of non-existence can't be held with any degree of certainty means you believe that no claim can ever be held with any degree of certainty. Which is not a very interesting insight.

[TwoPhonesOneKid]

This is an equally unsupportable claim, though. This requires enumeration of the entire state of the universe, an impossibility. This is just the standard swan problem (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_swan_theory). What you have is a model you're very confident in without the deductively-rational basis your diction implies.

People should really read more hume if they're going to weigh in on philosophy of science.

[artemonster]

This is highly stupid argument, honestly. burden of proof lies on people that make idiot claims

[TwoPhonesOneKid]

Hume is deeply disappointed in you.

[almostgotcaught]

> You do realize we all know it's impossible to have any degree of certainty in asserting the non-existence of something, right?

I love condescension that is so petty it's laughable. As the commenters said below there are very well-understood precedents/principles that allow me to conclude "no" here eg

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot

So no it's not "impossible to have any degree of certainty in asserting the non-existence of something", we actually have a whole branch of mathematics dedicated to exactly that (it's called probability and statistics).

[TwoPhonesOneKid]

Probablility and statistics are models that produce something we call certainty. This has no relation to actual certainty, aka knowledge. If you're making an abductive claim, you should state it as an abductive claim. Otherwise you're simply claiming true knowledge that is literally impossible to have.