• ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.works
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    3 months ago

    There’s plenty of evidence to the contrary. Teacups are man-made objects, rocket launches are closely monitored, and no rocket is known to have launched a teapot into that orbit. It isn’t absolutely impossible that something very much like a teapot formed there spontaneously, that a teapot was secretly launched there for no apparent reason, or that extraterrestrials placed a teapot there, but again there is evidence that these events are very unlikely to have happened. Russell’s goal was to illustrate that the burden of proof should be on the one making unfalsifiable claims, but he didn’t pick a good example - the lack of a plausible mechanism for the teapot to arrive in that orbit was even stronger evidence before spaceflight.