LEE’S SUMMIT, JULY 17, 2017 – To address this issue about Donald Trump, the Trump Campaign, or Donald Trump Junior’s collusion or better said conspiracy with Russia, I first searched Wikipedia and found these links:

Proving a negative or negative proof may refer to:

To save you from clicking on the links (unless you want to follow the references) here is what they each say:

PROVING A NEGATIVE, IN THE PHILOSOPHIC BURDEN OF PROOF

A negative claim is a colloquialism for an affirmative claim that asserts the non-existence or exclusion of something. Saying “You cannot prove a negative” is a pseudo logic because there are many proofs that substantiate negative claims in mathematics, science, and economics including Arrow’s impossibility theorem. There can be multiple claims within a debate but whether a claim is positive or negative, whoever made the claim has the burden of proof of that claim.

A negative claim may or may not exist as a counterpoint to a previous claim. A proof of impossibility or an evidence of absence argument are typical methods to fulfill the burden of proof for a negative claim.

EVIDENCE OF ABSENCE IN GENERAL, SUCH AS EVIDENCE THAT THERE IS NO MILK IN A CERTAIN BOWL

Not to be confused with Absence of evidence.

Evidence of absence is evidence of any kind that suggests something is missing or that it does not exist.

Per the traditional aphorism, “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence”, positive evidence of this kind is distinct from a lack of evidence or ignorance of that which should have been found already, had it existed. In this regard Irving Copi writes:

    In some circumstances, it can be safely assumed that if a certain event had occurred, evidence of it could be discovered by qualified investigators. In such circumstances, it is perfectly reasonable to take the absence of proof of its occurrence as positive proof of its non-occurrence.

    — Copi, Introduction to Logic (1953), p. 95

MODUS TOLLENS, A LOGICAL PROOF

The argument has two premises. The first premise is a conditional or “if-then” statement, for example that if P then Q. The second premise is that it is not the case that Q . From these two premises, it can be logically concluded that it is not the case that P.

Consider an example:

    If the watch-dog detects an intruder, the watch-dog will bark.

    The watch-dog did not bark.

    Therefore, no intruder was detected by the watch-dog.

Supposing that the premises are both true (the dog will bark if it detects an intruder, and does indeed not bark), it follows that no intruder has been detected. This is a valid argument since it is not possible for the conclusion to be false if the premises are true. (It is conceivable that there may have been an intruder that the dog did not detect, but that does not invalidate the argument; the first premise is “if the watch-dog detects an intruder.” The thing of importance is that the dog detects or doesn’t detect an intruder, not if there is one.)

PROOF OF IMPOSSIBILITY, MATHEMATICS

Among the most important proofs of impossibility of the 20th century, were those related to undecidability, which showed that there are problems that cannot be solved in general by any algorithm at all. The most famous is the halting problem.

In computational complexity theory, techniques like relativization (see oracle machine) provide “weak” proofs of impossibility excluding certain proof techniques. Other techniques like proofs of completeness for a complexity class provide evidence for the difficulty of problems by showing them to be just as hard to solve as other known problems that have proved intractable.

 RUSSELL’S TEAPOT, AN ANALOGY: INABILITY TO DISPROVE DOES NOT PROVE

Russell’s teapot is an analogy, formulated by the philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872–1970), to illustrate that the philosophic burden of proof lies upon a person making unfalsifiable claims, rather than shifting the burden of disproof to others.

Russell specifically applied his analogy in the context of religion.] He wrote that if he were to assert, without offering proof, that a teapot orbits the Sun somewhere in space between the Earth and Mars, he could not expect anyone to believe him solely because his assertion could not be proven wrong.

Russell’s teapot is still invoked in discussions concerning the existence of God, and has had influence in various fields and media.

SOMETIMES IT IS MISTAKEN FOR AN ARGUMENT FROM IGNORANCE, WHICH IS NON-PROOF AND A LOGICAL FALLACY

Argument from ignorance (from Latin: argumentum ad ignorantiam), also known as appeal to ignorance (in which ignorance represents “a lack of contrary evidence”), is a fallacy in informal logic. It asserts that a proposition is true because it has not yet been proven false (or vice versa). This represents a type of false dichotomy in that it excludes a third option, which is that there may have been an insufficient investigation, and therefore there is insufficient information to prove the proposition be either true or false. Nor does it allow the admission that the choices may in fact not be two (true or false), but may be as many as four,

    true

    false

    unknown between true or false

    being unknowable (among the first three).[1]

In debates, appeals to ignorance are sometimes used in an attempt to shift the burden of proof.

THE DONALD TRUMP, DONALD TRUMP CAMPAIGN AND THE DONALD TRUMP JUNIOR RUSSIAN QUEST

In the above, I’ve posed the six possible proofs used to prove the negative.  Donald Trump, his campaign and his son have been painted into the greatest possible quandary imaginable.  If you are keeping score at home, you’re going to have to read a great deal to make sense of this.

POSIT: (To put forth as the basis of the argument)

Hillary Clinton Lost the Election due to Election Meddling and a Trump / Russia collusion (I prefer conspiracy).

EVIDENCE of COLLUSION:

Please define the word evidence.  I took a screen shot of the definition in Merriam-Webster’s dictionary and posted it to help you.

picture of the Definition of Evidence

Definition of Collusion: A secret agreement or cooperation especially for an illegal or deceitful purpose.

LS CONSERVATIVE LOGIC:

 

Read the article and you have “Evidence” of a meeting.  Not evidence of an “Attempt to Collude”.  Keep in mind the Teapot comment earlier in this article.  Saying that there is a Teapot circling the sun, is not Evidence of it.  Proof must be detailed and understood by even the most casual observer.  I see no proof, no evidence, only political hyperbole.

 

Since I don’t understand the NY Magazine’s point of view, and they too fail to present any evidence to support their argument, I choose not to follow their instructional headline.

I wonder if the NYMAG editors would write:  Stop assuming that a person charged with a crime is innocent?  Our entire legal system is based on a simple presumption in criminal cases:  You are innocent until PROVEN guilty.  We go further.  Our legal system, at one time, was designed under the following assumption:  It is better that ten guilty men go free, than to sentence one innocent man.  This was, of course, talking about the death penalty.

Is the destruction of a presidency on innuendo, hearsay, and assumptions rather than evidence and proof, tantamount to a death sentence to the Presidency in question?

There are 81,900 stories that Google picked up with the following search parameters (PAST WEEK, and “evidence trump russia collusion” and if you review them, none of them have actual EVIDENCE to support their arguments.

 

I believe two things clearly:

First, I believe that until there is true evidence of a conspiracy (collusion has no legal definition) between Russia and Trump, the Trump Campaign, or his family, I will read and listen, but not pass judgement.  To do so would be to pre-judge (prejudice).

Second, I believe that the Duly Elected President of the United States of America, must focus on his agenda, and the Congress should work to move the agenda the United States Voters put them in office to do:

  • Repeal Obamacare. Return insurance to the private sector. Open up insurance borders from coast to coast. Remove cost risers from the healthcare system so that costs can come down.
  • Pass significant Tax Reform – we are too expensive to do business in the US of A.
  • Encourage the repatriation of foreign funds by American companies
  • Secure the Border, and follow it up with real Immigration reform for the 21st Century realities.
  • Get the economy moving again, meaning a 4% growth in GDP so we can have JOBs and income opportunities.

When the time comes and either the Trump 4 years in office are over, or his 8 years in office are over, come to an end, or there is some true EVIDENCE of a criminal conspiracy, I’ll re-think my beliefs.

Until that time, we have a president.  He was elected by the system in place in 2016 AD.  He has a mandate from his electors to Make America Great Again, and that is the only thing he should be held accountable for, until such time as true EVIDENCE tells us differently.

By the way, just because we read it on a newspaper, or a blog, or hear it on TV, a repeated factless or evidence-less statement, remains factless or evident-less.  No matter how many times it is repeated.

Respectfully Submitted

The Lee’s Summit Conservative.