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In Epicurus's letter to Pythocles, he proposes three different explanations for lightning strikes: compression of air by wind, a cloud suddenly breaking, or a buildup of fire suddenly bursting.
All wrong, but he goes on to say (Makridis translation):
It is indeed possible that the thunderbolt may be generated in any one of many more ways.
Maybe this is all you need if you're annoyed with people saying it's Zeus's wrath so you'd better make sacrifices at their temple.
You just have to say, well, it could be a lot of other things too.
Meeting unfounded explanations with more explanations
I used to think you shouldn't propose explanations without evidence.
Now I think you should have at least three.
If you come up with an explanation that's total speculation or pseudoscience, don't feel bad for making unfounded claims.
Think of two more.
Or if someone else proposes some bullshit explanation, it's more fun to come up with new explanations than to complain about a lack of evidence.
But more importantly, that's what it means to lack evidence, right?
We know there's no evidence when we can propose alternatives, and there's no evidence that falsifies them.
I do sometimes propose alternatives adversarially, when I'm annoyed, as Epicurus was, at the unfounded claims of others.
When I say you lack evidence, the content of my claim is that you cannot rule out other plausible alternatives.
The right way to make that case, at least in my opinion, is directly: list the alternatives.
Everything else (you haven't done a study, or you did a study but it wasn't randomized, etc.) is at best a proxy for this substance.
But, again, it's fun to propose explanations.
When someone isn't taking what they're saying too seriously, I think I should meet them in the same spirit and play the same game.
Recognizing evidence by the possibilities it excludes
Of course, sometimes a claim is well-founded after all.
Epicurus was not always able to notice well-supported claims.
His letter to Py