Name: Can you outsmart the fallacy that started a witch hunt? - Elizabeth Cox
Uploaded: 2020-10-26T18:25:58.000Z
Duration: 4 min 24 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Humans are tireless in their pursuit of reason.

Following threats from the communist  governments of the Soviet Union and China,

anti-communist sentiment in  the United States is at an all-time high.

Senator Joseph McCarthy claims  he has a list of 205 communists in the US

"The senate forms a committee  to investigate McCarthy's claims.

against prominent lawyer, judge, and activist Dorothy Kenyon.

He accuses her of membership to 28  organizations that are communist fronts.

Newspapers around the country  rush to her defense,

pointing out her vocally  anti-communist record.

The senate committee schedules  a hearing anyway,

If the government won't be  a voice of reason, I'll have to.

I'm surprised you good legislators have agreed to move this hearing forward.

You're falling prey to a type  of argument from ignorance:

assuming that a claim is true  because it hasn't been proven false.

The claim being Senator McCarthy's  accusations against Judge Kenyon,

for which he provided  no legitimate evidence.

Some of the so-called communist  organizations he accused her of joining

To assume a claim is true  because it hasn't been proven false

that it hasn't been proven false yet,  that it can't be proven true or false,

or that it isn't completely true  or completely false, to name a few.

the burden of proof lies with the person making the claim.

In other words, you make the claim, you supply the proof.

would you head off to find proof that they don't exist?

You'd tell that person  to show you the UFO.

The same applies when someone  makes a claim

that contradicts an established consensus.

So when all the available evidence  suggests

that humans are causing an increase  in global temperatures,

the burden of proof has been fulfilled—

if you disagree, it becomes  your responsibility to prove otherwise.

Anyway, your legal system  supposedly recognizes this rule—

and the senate subcommittee has officially dismissed all charges against Kenyon."

"It's 1954, and the senate  has formally disciplined McCarthy."

but will never again be elected  to a public office.

Because of his widespread  anti-communist influence,

hundreds of people have been incarcerated, and thousands have lost their jobs."