✝️ Proverbs 18:13 If one gives answer before hearing,     it is folly and shame. Historians have a way of handling contested data that is very interesting to me and I want to explain it, I am not a historian though! Before I explain how historians reason I will introduce some concepts! A source is where information comes from such as a person, a document, an object, tradition, etc. Now a claim is a statement that is either true or false, a source may contain many claims, for example a claim that the mayor was being cheap, a claim that the mayor did not fund the festival, etc. Claims should be weighed on their own. Now evidence is information used to support a claim and evidence can come from one or many sources! Now sources have different kinds, dependance, and stances. The two kinds of sources are primary and secondary sources! A primary source is a source that is either created by the people during that era, a place, or an event during that time period being studied. For example say we have a paper and the physical paper itself is dated to 1887 but the text on it is by an author from 1777, it would still be a primary source, assuming it isn't a forgery because even though it physically isn't the original letter, it still has what the author wrote, copies are primary sources as long as it accurately preserves what the author wrote! A secondary source is a source that was created using primary sources but is not a copy of the primary sources. For example, a modern history text book and a secondary source is only as reliable as the primary sources it uses! For example, say someone was there when some events took place and wrote about it but forgot about some things that happened and wasn't there for everything, and say they use primary sources to fill in the gaps, the data that fills the gaps would be considered secondary while the stuff they remember and wrote about from their experience is primary! Now, sources can be dependent or independent! A source is dependent if it got some information from another source and a source is independent if it did not get some information from any other source. Now a source can contain independent parts and dependent parts and if it does then it helps to split the source into dependent and independent parts. A good test to see if a source is dependent or not is to check if information in one source could have ended up in another or if multiple sources could have got information from another source! However, if multiple sources are dependent then them sharing data might not be different pieces of evidence, it could just be the same evidence repeated! The different stances of sources are friendly, neutral, and hostile! A friendly source is a source where a person, group, or event is displayed in a positive light. A neutral source is a source where a person, group, or event is displayed without any lean. A hostile source is a source where a person, group, or event is displayed in a negative light. The reason why stance matters is because a claim can be more believable when it displays something against the source's own lean, for example a friendly source admitting something bad or maybe a hostile source admitting something good. If it goes against its own lean it is more likely to be true! In history nothing is 100% proven like it can be in logic or math! History is all about comparing how likely things are against other things and updating belief as new evidence comes in. However, sometimes in history the answer truly is undetermined! Now, to update and weigh how likely things are historians use specific tests where each test is called a criterion! I will walk you through some of them! The first criterion is called the criterion of embarrassment! Remember when I said a source that displays something against its own lean is more likely to be true? The criterion of embarrassment is that idea as a tool, it asks whether a source kept something that hurts how the main subject is viewed, or the people who made it! But like every criterion you will see, it has problems! What seems hurtful to us might not have been hurtful to them, because maybe what seems hurtful to us was totally normal to them or maybe it secretly served some purpose we are not seeing! However, there are ways to see whether something was embarrassing. For example, you can show that it did hurt them or hurt the subject from being viewed in a positive light. Or maybe other sources from around that time for something different say a certain thing is embarrassing. Or maybe if you see later sources trying to explain away whatever happened, remove it, or change it! In my toy logic called [apocrypha](APOCRYPHA_A_TOY_LOGIC), I can model embarrassment via the INC operator and proof that something was actually embarrassing via the STRINC operator! The INC operator pushes up the likelihood that something is true. The stronger the proof that it was really embarrassing, the harder it pushes via STRINC! The next criterion is called the criterion of multiple attestation and it means that the more independent sources, the more likely something is to be true! Now copies are not independent but say a copy has additional material then it could have independent properties but it would not fully be independent! Say we have 3 sources and 2 are mainly just a retelling of the first source but each have their own separate material that is not in any other copies, they could be semi independent! However multiple sources agreeing on something shows that it was widespread or early, not necessarily true, if they all contain an error from an earlier copy that shared error is one error now multiple! In my toy logic, I can represent independent attestation via INC, and when sources are cleanly independent I can use BIGINC, but say we found out the sources copied each other then we use STRDEC and STRDEC weakens how hard the INC or BIGINC pushes! The next criterion is called the criterion of dissimilarity, and it is the weakest criterion! It asks whether a claim is hard to explain as either borrowed from the culture the source came from, or something later added by people, and if it fits neither then it is more likely to be authentic! For example say we have a source that describes the rule of a mayor in a small town, say that source has quotes by him too! If a quote has him supporting rewards for good deeds, because his town's culture believed in rewarding people who did good deeds. Because his town's culture already believed in rewards for good deeds, a supporter could easily have made up the quote and put it in the source! However, if he argued that good deeds should be done in secret with no reward then it is unlikely it was made up by his supporters because there would be no reason to, but it is possible though but still it is unlikely! This criterion is the weakest in my eyes because not accepting something just because it fits the culture removes a lot of authentic material because people are shaped by their culture and shape other people, so of course a lot of what they actually said will overlap with both! That is why you should only use this criterion if something is different than the culture, also do not reject a claim just for fitting in with the culture! Now, in my logic I can represent this criterion once again with INC! But note that for this criterion the INC would be weak! The next criterion is called the criterion of coherence, and it means a claim is more believable if it fits the evidence about the subject. For example, say we have a small town and the mayor is very cheap and he hated spending money. Say a new quote is discovered by him where he explains that he is not going to fund a festival. Since the quote fits what we know about him it is believable! The problem with this criterion is that it depends on whether our previous evidence is independent or not. If it is not, then if you assume the mayor was cheap, then apply every cheap quote to him because it fits, and point to the quotes as evidence he was cheap, well... you have gone in a circle! So this criterion only counts when what you know relies on independent evidence and when you let new evidence change the existing evidence to support something else instead of forcing all the evidence to work together! In my toy logic, I can represent this via INC if the evidence is built on independent evidence, but if it was not then we can use the CANT operator! The final criterion is called the plausibility of effects and instead of looking at the claims like the other criteria, it looks at what happened after. If what happened after is real and needs a cause then the claim that would fit as a cause gets more likely! For example, say we have a small town with a lot of money after the mayor left. A questionable claim could say he spent years secretly cutting costs and that is why there is so much money! Now, that claim could explain the increase in money so its likelihood increases! Now, some problems with this criterion are the fact that the increase in money can have other causes like what if someone donated to the town or some tax thing happened, we have to rule those out! However, this criterion is strong when the claim works as a cause better than the other possible claims! I can model this in my toy logic with INC and BIGINC when rival causes are ruled out and it is the best explanation! Now, I will warn you on this, these criteria do not add up like points! Two criteria can work for the same reason meaning it isn't two separate pieces of evidence but it is one, so you have to check if the pushes are actually independent before adding them, also speaking about adding stuff don't use numbers for the most part, my toy logic is numberless on purpose! Also note that none of this proves anything, a claim could be extremely unlikely and all the criteria could work against it but it could still be true!