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Can I get a group opinion on a related question? Would that be appropriate? I got into a debate with someone over falsifiability. I claimed that the falsifia
by knodi123 10y ago
Can I get a group opinion on a related question? Would that be appropriate?
I got into a debate with someone over falsifiability. I claimed that the falsifiability of a claim is relative to the person hearing it, and he claimed it was an intrinsic property of the claim itself.
I said that the claim "I am currently sitting on a couch" is falsifiable to my family, and potentially my neighbors, but not to a peasant in north korea. He disagreed, rather profanely and insultingly, and the debate disintegrated, because of John Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory. But I'd still like to know what a more level-headed and calm group of people think on the subject.
- btouellette 10y agoFalsifiability is generally taken as an intrinsic property of the claim in science and philosophy. "Is there any possible way" rather than "is there any reasonable way".
- sqeaky 10y agoFalsifiablity is generally treated more like a philosophical idea than a practical concern. Consider how relativity made several real predictions about things in the universe, but no human was yet able to test them. In principle relativity was considered falsifiable we just couldn't test it yet. When the 1918 eclipse came about and we could measure the deviation of light from it expected course by traveling through the gravity well of the sun, we had a real test and it was relatively inexpensive and easy compared to to some scientific endeavors (it was still not easy for the teams involved but it was no large hadron collider). This lets us permanently discard ideas that are in principle not falsifiable. These ideas are categorically useless from the perspective of actually understanding the world, like capricious invisible wish granting unicorns that live in my garage or any typical conception of god.