Oh, I wasn't aware that they had to be Bayesian for that rule to apply, thanks for the help.

Either the parties must agree to disagree (which they could honestly do if they're not all Bayesians...

Could you elaborate on that? Sorry, I just don't get it.

I'm not sure if this what eagain was alluding to, but this does seem advisable; Do not permit (continuous) debates of recognizably bad ideas.

I admit this is difficult to enforce, but stating that rule will, in my opinion, color the intended purpose of this website.

And I had to read past the end to realize that...

Upvoted entirely for using "begs the question" correctly.

Ha, did you really praise the proper use of an ancient expression in the midst of a definition debate?

(Sorry about posting this 4 years later, I just had to get that out.)

Sometimes even simple questions like 'where did the first humans come from?' turn out to have complicated answers

Of course it's not actually a simple question, it's really a broad inquiry. In fact it doesn't even need to have an answer and even when it does, it usually alters the question slightly... the hard part is asking the right questions not finding the answer.

(It just dawned on me that this was the whole point of The Question in A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, thanks for that.)

MarsColony_in10years: Yeah, thanks. Sorry about the nitpicking.

ChristianKl: I think an infinite number would allow you to rule out the possibility (of a black swan that is). I thought that the problem was simply that we could never get an infinite number of them, but then again: I'm not certain.

And you notice, I haven't even started to think about the ethical side of the question...

I'm pretty sure the question itself revolves around ethics, as far as I can tell the question is: given these 2 choices, which would you consider, ethically speaking, the ideal option?

The police officer is PAID to do that. He isn't doing it for free out of the goodness of his heart like the superhero is.

Oh cool, so if I pay you will you let me kill you?

You know the only thing worse than arguing about politics, is arguing why one shouldn't argue about politics.

Seriously though, while this post is/was important, I still think there should have been a request to not debate politics in this post's comment section, because you know, explaining why it's bad to debate politics in science blogs apparently wasn't enough.