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komponisto comments on Conversation Halters - Less Wrong
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Also: appeal to less than absolute certainty: "There's no way we can know for sure, since we weren't there. We can make judgments, but we don't have knowledge." Or, when you say "X", someone responds "are you really sure of X?", and you say "I'm 99% sure of X", they accuse you of retreating from your position: "Oh, well you didn't say that before; you just said 'X', which is an expression of absolute certainty" -- thereby interrupting the conversation and dodging the disagreement.
Closely related to the appeal to permanent unknowability and the appeal to humility.
Isn't that precisely what the appeal to humility is?
It's related. The distinction would be that, in the appeal to humility, the one denies that we can be 99% sure of the proposition in the first place, or perhaps even much greater than 50%; whereas in the appeal to less than absolute certainty, they ignore the significance of 99% certainty, and pretend that only 100% certainty "counts". (Or, they may ignore the significance of 90% certainty, and pretend that only >99% certainty "counts", etc.)
When this happens to me, I often try to explain how 100% certainty (or 0%) is a mathematical concept that's incompatible with how evidence is actually gathered (which they'll usually nod along to, unless they see where this is going), and then proceed to explain how this means that the word "certainty" does not, in fact, mean 100%.
This has yet to convince anyone. I should probably think of something else.
Taboo "certainty"?