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Kaj_Sotala comments on Open Thread, April 27-May 4, 2014 - Less Wrong Discussion
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What is this "burden of proof" and for what purposes is it a useful concept? There are factual questions and people with some capacity and motivation for pursuing them. When social norms dictate how this pursuit should proceed, it's no longer about the questions.
If someone is (or seems like they might be) privileging the hypothesis, it seems reasonable to say that the burden of proof is on them, not just as a social norm but also as a question of epistemology.
In other words, if there are a hundred boxes where the diamond could be and I claim that it's in box number 27, then it's reasonable that I ought to provide some evidence for this claim, rather than requiring the other person to come up with a hypothesis for why my claim would be false. There are an infinite number of false hypotheses, and if we try to test them all rather than focusing on the most promising ones, we'll never get anywhere.