Not to pick on you, but you really misunderstand the concept

Posted on: December 28, 2016 at 22:04:16 CT

of "you cannot prove a negative".

"You cannot prove a negative" is an existential exercise which essentially holds that one can present evidence to prove that something exists, but lack of evidence does not prove that something does not exist. It plays out like this: You cannot prove that God does not exist just because there is no evidence that he exists.

Just because there is a "not" in someone's statement does not mean that it cannot be proven. Many negative statements can be proven quite easily, (i.e. I do not have 50 arms, Mexico is not north of America, Cars do not run on olive oil, etc.)

The weird thing is that your own post highlights your misunderstanding of this logical concept, when you write:

"You cannot prove the Russians did not hack the DNC. You could possibly prove someone else did but that still would not prove that the Russians did not."

If someone else did the hacking, then you are well on your way to proving that the Russians did not hack! Obviously there are other variables at play, but you can certainly prove that Russians did not hack. This is not something subject to the concept of "you cannot prove a negative".

Again, it is an existential exercise. It is not something employed anytime you see the words "no" "not" or "never".