F107 • Informal - Evidence/Evasion
Also known as: Raising the Bar, Shifting Standards, Changing the Rules
Someone asks you to meet a standard, and you meet it. Then the standard changes. The criteria for proof, for success, for being good enough -- they shift just after you satisfy them, and new requirements appear that were never mentioned before. The target was not a target at all; it was a moving point designed, consciously or not, to stay just out of reach.
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Asking for better evidence, higher standards, and more thorough proof are some of the best habits a mind can have. The difficulty is that those same habits, when applied selectively and retroactively, become a way of never having to concede anything. If you set a standard and someone meets it, you have a genuine choice: update your position, or raise the bar again. The second option feels like intellectual rigor -- after all, you are asking for more -- but when the new requirements only appear after the old ones were satisfied, the rigor is an illusion. The real function is not to get closer to the truth but to make sure the truth never arrives. Over time, the pattern becomes clear: no amount of evidence would have been enough, because the required amount was never fixed. It was always going to be one step beyond whatever was provided.
| When questions are genuinely seeking understanding and limited in scope. |
| When the questioner accepts reasonable evidence and moves the discussion forward. |
| When skepticism is proportionate to the claim being made. |
| When both parties are engaging cooperatively toward truth. |
| The clearest sign is the feeling of running on a treadmill -- effort that never arrives anywhere. If you have met a stated standard and the response is a new standard rather than an acknowledgment, the posts may have moved. |
| Try to reconstruct the original ask. What was actually requested at the beginning? If the current demand looks nothing like the original one, something has shifted along the way. |
| Ask the question directly, to yourself or to someone else: 'What evidence would change your mind? Can we agree on that before we look at the evidence?' If the answer changes after the evidence comes in, you have your answer. |
| Watch for a pattern where each new requirement is introduced only after the previous one has been met. Legitimate follow-up questions exist, but they tend to be extensions of the original inquiry, not replacements for it. |
| Notice when you are the one moving the posts. This is genuinely hard to catch in yourself, because each new requirement feels reasonable in the moment. The test is not whether the new requirement is reasonable but whether you would have stated it in advance. |
| Confusing legitimate follow-up questions with moving the goal posts. Asking for clarification about the evidence someone provided is not the same as dismissing it and demanding something different. The difference is whether the new question builds on the evidence or replaces it. |
| Not recognizing when the original criteria were genuinely ambiguous. If someone says 'prove it' without specifying what proof would look like, subsequent refinement of what counts is not necessarily bad faith -- it might be the conversation getting more precise. |
| Confusing this with Ad Hoc Rescue. Moving the Goal Posts changes the standard by which a claim is evaluated. Ad Hoc Rescue changes the claim itself to avoid the standard. Both are evasions, but they work in opposite directions. |
| Moving the Goal Posts |
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| Persistently making relentless requests for evidence, explanations, or clarifications in a manner that appears polite but is intended to exhaust, frustrate, or derail the discussion rather than genuinely seek understanding. The requester maintains a veneer of civility while demanding that others continuously defend their positions. |
| While asking for evidence is generally legitimate, sealioning becomes fallacious when the requests are made in bad faith - the questioner has no genuine intention to be persuaded and uses repeated demands as a harassment tactic. It weaponizes the norms of civil discourse and burden of proof to exhaust opponents. The pattern involves ignoring substantive responses, moving goalposts, and continuing to demand more proof regardless of what's provided. This violates the cooperative principle of conversation where participants engage in good faith toward mutual understanding. |
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