Sure. This is not surprising; if I spontaneously deny having done something, many people will in fact treat this as evidence of my having done it. (Obligatory TV Tropes link.)
That said, of the set of all possible actions that I haven’t denied doing that I’ve been accused of doing, I’ve done a non-trivial percentage P1 of them. Of the times that I deny having done something that I’ve been accused of doing, I lie some non-trivial percentage P2 of the time.
Therefore, my denial of something I’m accused of is evidence of guilt if P2 > P1 and evidence of innocence if P1 > P2.
Of the set of all possible actions that you haven’t denied doing, you’ve only done a minuscule percentage of them.
Of the times that you deny having done something, you lie some non-trivial percent of the time.
Therefore, your denial is evidence of guilt.
Even if the conclusion is true it does not follow from the premises given. It relies on the additional implied premise:
We know nothing about the thing you are denying except that it is in the set of all possible things that could be denied.
There are some cases where denial is evidence of guilt, there are other cases where it is evidence of innocence and still others where it is no evidence either way.
Denials are usually prompted by some circumstances, perhaps circumstances that provide some evidence that the denied action actually took place. That may be a confounding factor; among cases where such evidence is present, is there more likely to be a denial when the person is guilty than when the person is innocent? If not, perhaps you shouldn’t take the denial as contributing anything further beyond what you learned from the evidence that prompted the denial.
Of the set of all possible actions that you haven’t denied doing, you’ve only done a minuscule percentage of them.
Of the times that you deny having done something, you lie some non-trivial percent of the time.
Therefore, your denial is evidence of guilt.
Sure. This is not surprising; if I spontaneously deny having done something, many people will in fact treat this as evidence of my having done it. (Obligatory TV Tropes link.)
That said, of the set of all possible actions that I haven’t denied doing that I’ve been accused of doing, I’ve done a non-trivial percentage P1 of them. Of the times that I deny having done something that I’ve been accused of doing, I lie some non-trivial percentage P2 of the time.
Therefore, my denial of something I’m accused of is evidence of guilt if P2 > P1 and evidence of innocence if P1 > P2.
(Obligatory TV Tropes link.)
See also
Even if the conclusion is true it does not follow from the premises given. It relies on the additional implied premise:
We know nothing about the thing you are denying except that it is in the set of all possible things that could be denied.
There are some cases where denial is evidence of guilt, there are other cases where it is evidence of innocence and still others where it is no evidence either way.
Denials are usually prompted by some circumstances, perhaps circumstances that provide some evidence that the denied action actually took place. That may be a confounding factor; among cases where such evidence is present, is there more likely to be a denial when the person is guilty than when the person is innocent? If not, perhaps you shouldn’t take the denial as contributing anything further beyond what you learned from the evidence that prompted the denial.