The assumption that, for any historical event, we have access to enough information to definitively identify the cause. This manifests in two forms:
In criminal trials, we assume that the most likely suspect is definitely guilty. If there are nine possible suspects, and one is twice as likely as the others to have committed the crime, that’s considered proof of guilt—but it’s still four times as likely to have been one of the other eight.
In conspiracy theories, if there’s a similar situation where there are nine possible causes for a historical event, an official investigation may declare one of them the most likely—which can be true in spite of the fact that it’s still probably wrong. But conspiracy theorists, instead of accepting that that’s the best that can be done, take the improbability of the investigation’s explanation as proof that the real cause was suppressed.
The assumption that, for any historical event, we have access to enough information to definitively identify the cause. This manifests in two forms:
In criminal trials, we assume that the most likely suspect is definitely guilty. If there are nine possible suspects, and one is twice as likely as the others to have committed the crime, that’s considered proof of guilt—but it’s still four times as likely to have been one of the other eight.
In conspiracy theories, if there’s a similar situation where there are nine possible causes for a historical event, an official investigation may declare one of them the most likely—which can be true in spite of the fact that it’s still probably wrong. But conspiracy theorists, instead of accepting that that’s the best that can be done, take the improbability of the investigation’s explanation as proof that the real cause was suppressed.