I'll also add that this persistent refrain of yours is not only disingenuous, it is juvenily disingenuous.
In my profession, I deal with the cumulative effect of evidence on a regular basis. Standing alone, a single fact or evidentiary data point is rarely if ever dispositive or even persuasive. With the addition of evidence, however, inferences become more compelling, and it is precisely the cumulative effect of multiple evidentiary data points that permits courts and juries to draw dispositive conclusions.
This is such a self-evident process that no court or juror I have ever encountered has proposed your absurd iteration -- that the beach must be ignored because no single grain of sand demonstrates its existence.
You really should not be surprised that your obvious, if tedious, game is greeted with disparagement. When any singular evidence is dismissed as "not enough," and multiple evidences are dismissed as "too much," there's not much point in continuing the discussion.
Just out of curiosity, may I ask what your profession is?
With the addition of evidence, however, inferences become more compelling, and it is precisely the cumulative effect of multiple evidentiary data points that permits courts and juries to draw dispositive conclusions.
The problem is that the courts and juries are people that most likely didn't have time to devote their life to studying these thousands of tiny evidences, and who can't see the evidence themselves -- and as a result they probably just believed in the existence of all the evidence at the advise of the lawyers who asserted that it was true, and who are probably not above name-calling and insulting.
that the beach must be ignored because no single grain of sand demonstrates its existence.
A grain of sand doesn't prove the existence of a beach, unless it's found with a lot of other grains of sand along the waters edge. There's sand in the desert and there's sand mixed in with topsoil and deep "soil" everywhere I've ever dug up.
Standing alone, a single fact or evidentiary data point is rarely if ever dispositive or even persuasive. With the addition of evidence, however, inferences become more compelling,
Ahh, so we're getting someplace! There is no best evidence. There's not even any great evidence. The only evidence is a thousand little evidences each which by themselves can't stand alone, but stand only on the presumption that others can stand. It's like the farmer who knew that ostriches simply cannot fly because they have too little wing feather surface area, too little wing strength and too much weight, but he figures that if he harnesses a hundred of them together, each of their small lifting power will add up and then they will be able to fly!
But if the answer is "There is no persuasive single fact, and thou must studieth them all for years in order to see the evidence" -- then why didn't someone just tell me that in the first place?
When any singular evidence is dismissed as "not enough," and multiple evidences are dismissed as "too much,"
That's not exactly correct. It is true that I was given too little evidence -- as in not one good one. But it's not true that I was given too much evidence -- I was given too much to read in a lifetime, with no direction as to where I should start to find the alleged evidence. This looks like a common tactic of pointing the opponent to an impossibly large pool of documents and saying "If you want the evidence, you'll have to find it yourself in there. You're on your own." But I suspect that when you call on me to find the evidence for your argument that it must mean you couldn't find it :-)
Thanks,
-Jesse