Regarding your edit: I certainly agree that assertions that are quite strongly believed by people who are likely to have arrived at those beliefs correctly tend to be more plausible than assertions that aren’t. But that has nothing to do with whether any given observed fact is evidence of such a belief.
You’re correct. I was thinking in terms of “what evidence would be required for me to conclude that the FTW machine destroys the universe, and was visualizing other people coming to that conclusion for theoretical reasons as assisting in locating that hypothesis.
Regarding your edit: I certainly agree that assertions that are quite strongly believed by people who are likely to have arrived at those beliefs correctly tend to be more plausible than assertions that aren’t. But that has nothing to do with whether any given observed fact is evidence of such a belief.
You’re correct. I was thinking in terms of “what evidence would be required for me to conclude that the FTW machine destroys the universe, and was visualizing other people coming to that conclusion for theoretical reasons as assisting in locating that hypothesis.