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Originally Posted by Hitch
I'll bite. How? Seriously, what sort of negative do you think you can prove?
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Seriously? Let's start with obvious:
My 17 year old daughter didn't kill JFK.
I'll bring in historians, medical doctors and physicists to prove JFK died in 1963, she wasn't born then, and time travel isn't possible, so she couldn't have done it . QED.
Slightly more relevant to the situations I'm referring to:
My client didn't shoot the victim.
The victim was shot at noon by a thin, short white person, as shown on the security footage and corroborated by the three cops who witnessed it.
My client is a 7 foot tall 400 pound black person who at noon was in chains, in this court room, in your presence, your honor, and so could not have done it. QED.
From there, we just get in to various levels of near-certainty, still well beyond any reasonable doubt.
For many, many, many things, for something to have happened, some other things must have also happened or not happened.
If X had happened, it would have precluded Y. We can prove Y, so we've disproved X.
Like Sherlock Holmes observed, a person can't pass through a room without taking or leaving something. Show enough evidence, or lack thereof, of enough of those somethings and you meet any burden of proof.
The kid didn't eat the cookie. The cookie still there, intact. So it can't can't have been eaten, by him or anyone. QED
In your shelffish example, restaurant security footage shows everything the victim touched, ate or drank, and lab tests show no trace of shellfish on any of it or anywhere in our vegan restaurant. Is that enough proof?
ETA: "You can't prove a negative?" Really? Prove it. Ha! Logical paradox, sucka!
(Ooh... I like that. I'll need to use that line in a story sometime.)
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they'll sit there like maroons and have guns that never need reloading, and on and on. Daft.
Hitch
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I just watched the surprisingly funny "National Lampoon's Loaded Weapon 1." It parodied that with a spoof of Dirty Harry's "I know what you're thinking: Did I shoot 6 shots, or only 5?" with the character saying "Did I shoot 174 shots, or only 173?"