Abstract

Some belief systems postulate intelligent agents that are deliberately evading detection and thus sabotaging any possible investigation into their existence. These belief systems have the remarkable feature that they predict an absence of evidence in their favor, and even the discovery of counterevidence. Such ‘epistemic black holes’, as I call them, crop up in different guises and in different domains: history, psychology, religion. Because of their radical underdetermination by evidence and their extreme resilience to counterevidence, they develop and evolve in certain predictable ways. Shedding light on how epistemic black holes function can protect us against their allure.