> "No. Science never verifies, science only falsifies. If something were to be verified successfully, that would mean that falsification would be impossible. If

> "No. Science never verifies, science only falsifies. If something were to be verified successfully, that would mean that falsification would be impossible. If something is not falsifiable, it is not testable, and therefore not science, therefore science does not verify." It's the hypothesis that determines whether we're looking for the presence or absence of something, or in other words what the implications of a positive or negative result are. Perhaps you need to understand the roles that models play in science to see it. For example, when the standard model of physics predicted the Higgs boson, the purpose of searching for the Higgs boson was neither to verify or falsify the standard model, but rather to see whether it existed. The outcome either way was helpful in extending scientific knowledge. As it turns out, the Higgs boson was discovered, which is an example of science confirming something, which therefore negates "science only falsifies". > "No, unless you mean that in the very abstract sense that any information can be encoded as numbers." You're missing out on the fact I'm trying to suggest accurate quantification over simple quantification. You can attach a number to anything, that much is true, but the question is, does that number give you any power to predict outcomes? Or in other words, is it a useful number? I gave the example before of a sadness number. You can attach a number to perceived sadness, but does it tell you anything universal about the nature of sadness, or is it purely subjective? Note that subjective implies that it depends on the person in question and all environmental factors that exist at the time, which a single number would not account for. > "I'll take the "to accurately measure something" to mean "to explain something scientifically", as I don't understand what you mean by "accurately measure something", see above. "at least not yet" means "it's not possible now, possibly it will never be possible, possibly it will be possible at some point", right? So, where does that contradict the "admission" that "we'll probably never be able" to make that a misconception? Aren't you saying essentially the same thing with different words?" See above. To give you this same point in the form of a question, if you have a measurement, but it doesn't give you the power to predict anything, is that measurement scientifically useful? > "With noise, as all measurements are, but yes, what else would you be measuring?" > "All perfectly fine scientific question that one could investigate, no?" The point I was trying to make that clearly wasn't clear enough was, you don't have enough control over the variables, nor do you know what the important variables are, as not only are there a vast range to choose from, but the important variables may vary from person to person. If you have no way of determining whether confirmation/denial of your prediction was based on scientific understanding or chance, what have you really understood about how the world works? As I suggested previously, science is an attempt to create order out of chaos. Some chaos is simple enough for us to accurately model and predict, other chaos is simply too complex, too impenetrable, too hard to test in a controlled manner. If you consider that physics is a vast subject, and that this concerns the simplest of all phenomena in life, how much more complex do you think the science that studies, with the same level of detail, the affect of something even more unruly, such as the way society shapes its inhabitants. Sociology already exists, but the approaches that work in physics do not work in sociology, and the knowledge we do gain is fragmented and dependent on the society of the time. Our body of scientific knowledge in such fields will forever be limited because of that. > "Maybe, maybe not, how is the precision of a measurement relevant to the question of whether it is a measurement?" The whole purpose of having measurements in science is to be able to use past knowledge to guide more in-depth questions. If you cannot use a measurement to form future predictions/hypotheses, what value does it have for science? > "Are you saying that you think the answers you would get would be completely random with no connection to people's actual emotional state? Do you think that if you asked this question to a population of people whose loved ones were murdered the night before you ask them, they would be just as likely to answer 1 as they would be to answer 10 or any number in between, and the distribution of answers would be indistinguishable from when you asked a population of people who just found new love and won a million bucks in the lottery? Or in other words: Are you saying that you think the model/concept that we commonly refer to using the label "happiness" in the English language does not map to anything in reality?" The short answer is; any factor not in your control could skew the results, and in this case there are too many factors outside your control. Perception of happiness is just one example of a factor outside your control. As a side note, individuals react to trauma in different ways, and some of those ways are informed by social conditioning. > "Erm ... the relation described by the method that is used to arrive at this number? Is that a trick question?" See points above about the purpose of measurement / scientific models. > "Such as? Can you justify that position in any way? So far, this seems to be a completely unsupported assertion on your part." I gave you an example of quantifying sadness. > "Which is precisely what I said: It is a very important part of science to say "I don't know", that is exactly the recognition that scientific knowledge has limits." Not the same. "I don't know, but I believe we will in the future" is not the same as "I don't know, and I don't believe we ever will know". One statement has faith in the scientific method to conquer all obstacles at its core, the other has skepticism about the ability of the scientific method to overcome all obstacles at its core.