Guy Reams (00:03.0)
This is day 169, Rules of Evidence. I watched with some amusement an online back and forth debate between two family members regarding a hotly contested political issue. Both were firmly entrenched in their particular ideology and had facts to back up their claims. However, they each disputed the other's facts and quickly their debate crumbled into a volley of attacks.
with each one using every logical fallacy imaginable to try to score points. As I watched this relationship between two people unravel, I realized that they had entirely different worldviews and were operating from two separate set of facts, each disputed by the other. I competed in speech and debate in both high school and college. I also earned a degree in argumentation or rhetoric and have spent considerable time studying the rules of evidence.
What's interesting to me is how as political and social issues are adjudicated in public forums, people often allow their view of the world to be skewed and altered by arguments that wouldn't stand a chance as legitimate evidence in a compelling logical debate. No political side is immune to this problem. Take any current issue in the news and you'll find logical fallacies and flimsy evidence forming the backbone of multiple interpretations of reality.
This led me to take a look at some of my own views on the issues of the day. Is my thinking being swayed by unreliable, weak sources of evidence persuading me to accept their interpretation of events? Unfortunately, I think the answer is yes. There are some issues I haven't had the time to dig into, so I tend to accept what others say about them. In some cases, I hear facts and just assume they're true without really evaluating them.
So I took some time this morning to revisit the basic rules of evidence to see if I held any beliefs that were horribly misguided. The first is relevance. The first principle to consider is actually relevance. So often in disputes, people immediately redirect the conversation by saying something like, well, what about they bring up an unrelated event or situation to discredit the other person's interpretation?
Guy Reams (02:29.762)
Both parties get frustrated because they end up arguing over multiple scenarios and never resolve the original issue. Relevant evidence should directly relate to the matter at hand. It must make a fact more or less likely than it would be without the evidence. There's a reason courtroom motions are often involved in tense arguments over what is relevant.
Irrelevant facts can distract, mislead, or create bias without helping resolve the real issue at hand. Materiality. This is a more nuanced concept, but represents a higher standard of relevance. Evidence is material if it actually has a connection to the issue, and if true, would directly impact the outcome. That's what we mean when we say evidence quote unquote matters.
Many poor arguments introduce evidence that does not matter. Ad hominem attacks, appeals to authority, irrelevant observations, or surface level facts that don't actually relate to the core dispute. Strength of evidence. Not all evidence is created equal. Some evidence carries more weight than others. People instinctively understand this. Hence statements like, there's a video or a study found that. So here's a quick breakdown.
The best and most strongest form of evidence is direct evidence. This includes firsthand knowledge, eyewitness testimony, and actual video footage that hasn't been tweaked by AI. Physical or real evidence, tangible objects such as a document or a weapon, these are persuasive because they're concrete and hard to dispute. Documentary evidence.
when contracts or written records of communication. If these are authenticated, they can be powerful indicators of what somebody's real intent was. Testimony. When people can be unreliable, direct testimony from those who saw, recorded, or participated at event is the most compelling, especially when multiple testimonies corroborate each other. Circumstantial evidence. Often discussed in a courtroom drama,
Guy Reams (04:50.138)
We hear this all the time, circumstantial evidence. But circumstantial is indirect, but it can still be valid if it is well supported. Last would be demonstrative evidence, meaning diagrams or maps or timelines or a sequence of events. These are useful for understanding, but generally considered the weakest form of direct evidence. All of the above that I just mentioned are what we would consider direct evidence.
the kind that would be admissible in court. There are, of course, more nuanced legal rules, such as a hearsay exclusion. These don't really directly apply in public debate, but still could be relevant. For example, on social media, hearsay runs rampant. You'll hear people say, a friend of mine said she saw, this is not evidence at all. This is just what we would call rumor.
When facts are unclear or disputed, we often turn to experts. While expert opinion is useful, it is not or ever will be a substitute for direct evidence. But we do rely heavily on sources, especially in the court of public opinion. So what sources would be considered the strongest? The strongest source is always peer-reviewed journals.
These undergo expert scrutiny before publication. They follow standards or a methodology. They usually have the rules of evidence applied. And they tend to be more objective. They're strong sources of expert opinion, generally. Systematic or what we call literature review. These summarize findings from multiple peer-reviewed sources. They usually use a transparent methodology. And they usually identify consensus pretty well.
Third would be official government reports. Now, these are not immune to bias. They are prone to bias. But many agencies in the government do produce nonpartisan public-facing data. In the absence of any better sources, these are often the most reliable and definitely more reliable than public opinion pieces. So those are the strongest sources of expert opinion. There are other types that might be considered credible.
Guy Reams (07:10.188)
such as a commissioned case study, an industry report or publication, and some reputable media sources. These mid-tier sources can be biased or influenced by funding, editorial pressure, or even access. Still, if multiple of these align, they're often considered credible by the public. Now, the weakest sources, which unfortunately are the most commonly used.
The weakest sources are opinion or editorial pieces, blogs, including medium articles, social media posts, advertisements, propaganda, paid for content. What amazes me is how often we allow the weakest forms of evidence and the poorest sources to shape our interpretation of events. We accept and share interpretations without evaluating the quality or credibility of the source.
This is just my subject, my thoughts on this subject. One thing is for sure. I will not be sending this blog or this video to the two relatives who were screaming at each other in that online forum. If I dared to question the basis of their interpretation of reality, I'd likely become the next target of their ire. I'll continue to observe quietly and try to see if there's humor in it at all. Though admittedly, that humor is harder to get to now as we've become more polarized.