The philosophical and practical impossibility of providing evidence so absolute and universally acceptable that it compels belief in all rational observers, especially in social, ethical, or historical domains. What constitutes "proof" is itself a contested cultural construct, and the demand for impossible, frictionless proof is often a disingenuous tactic to maintain skepticism.
Example: Proving systemic racism. You can provide statistics on sentencing disparities, historical records, personal testimonies, and sociological studies. A skeptic will dismiss each as "correlation not causation," "anecdotal," "biased," or "theoretical." The Hard Problem of Proof is that no evidence can penetrate a worldview that redefines proof itself to preserve its assumptions.
by Dumuabzu February 8, 2026
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