Thursday, October 15, 2009

Rabbi Dovid Gottlieb <dovidlib@gmail.com>
(no subject)4 messages
Dear Rabbi Gottlieb. Hope you are well. I once transported you from one shiur to another in Manchester a few years ago. Anyway, I was just listening to a lecture about absolute proof. At one part of the shiur you mentioned that we don’t base life decisions on absolute proof, which I can understand. However, at another part of the shiur you mention that there is no way one can ever have absolute proof and you gave as an example that a DNA test could be switched or falsfified. But my question is - if you were competent in carrying out DNA tests yourself, you surely could have absolute proof? Or is this incorrect? Looking forward to your response,

You could make a mistake in your application of the process.
-- If you have no objections, I may post this letter on my blog - minus all identification.Kol tuv [All the best]Dovid Gottlieb

And I did it 1000 times and every time it matched!?

And you made the same mistake 1000 times. [This has happened very often in intellectual history - e.g. fallacious proofs repeated for centuries until the mistake was discovered].