3 ms·

That's a good point, I haven't actually spent a lot of time on Popper, though I was amused to find that under some interpretation of his argument, the most extr

That's a good point, I haven't actually spent a lot of time on Popper, though I was amused to find that under some interpretation of his argument, the most extreme varieties of obvious pseudoscience fall under science. In particular I wasn't aware the article even addressed Popper, in particular what's in footnote ii: >Strictly speaking any method can be made to falsify claims with the addition of a falsification rule. However, the rule must still be shown to be reliable. At the very least, I think it's shaky to try and apply the same standard regardless of the actual method of the science - since some fields take different approaches to others. That's not to say that all approaches are valid, but that one idea of science in one field shouldn't necessarily need to hold up in other one. Some sciences obviously greatly benefit (or did in the past) from even a simple statement of falsifiability, but to others it seems like a total mismatch for the problem domain. I hadn't considered Bayes' rule to work that way (my only exposure to statistics is an intro course on information theory as part of an EE degree) but if I'm right, this opens up a discussion as to how risky is risky enough - is astrology still in the picture then?

cbkeller 8y ago
Without having looked into it, my impression is that the popularity of astrology (and psychics, etc.) is down to the fact that they tend to make broad, vague predictions with a relatively high P(E) that people (emotionally) tend to underestimate. For instance "something bad will happen to you this month" -> "OMG, I stubbed my toe the other day, they were totally right". If we're accurate at assigning P(E), however, then we'll probably end up with a low P(H|E). The prior P(H) is also arguably trouble. What's a good prior likelihood for the hypothesis that magic sky gods affect your fortune? I don't know, but I'd probably have to start somewhere pretty low.
roenxi 8y ago
> I was amused to find that under some interpretation of his argument, the most extreme varieties of obvious pseudoscience fall under science You can't define science as 'the right answer' because that is unknowable (notwithstanding that there are a lot of things where if we havn't figured out the truth then the universe is set up to radically deceive us). And if you accept that unknowability as a premise, then pseudoscience is a perfectly valid science. Something can be completely wrong and still be established in a highly scientific way. Just because something is provably wrong doesn't make it unscientific. It just makes people who believe it provably wrong. They are likely to be stupid, I admit.

cbkeller 8y ago

Without having looked into it, my impression is that the popularity of astrology (and psychics, etc.) is down to the fact that they tend to make broad, vague predictions with a relatively high P(E) that people (emotionally) tend to underestimate. For instance "something bad will happen to you this month" -> "OMG, I stubbed my toe the other day, they were totally right". If we're accurate at assigning P(E), however, then we'll probably end up with a low P(H|E). The prior P(H) is also arguably trouble. What's a good prior likelihood for the hypothesis that magic sky gods affect your fortune? I don't know, but I'd probably have to start somewhere pretty low.

roenxi 8y ago

> I was amused to find that under some interpretation of his argument, the most extreme varieties of obvious pseudoscience fall under science You can't define science as 'the right answer' because that is unknowable (notwithstanding that there are a lot of things where if we havn't figured out the truth then the universe is set up to radically deceive us). And if you accept that unknowability as a premise, then pseudoscience is a perfectly valid science. Something can be completely wrong and still be established in a highly scientific way. Just because something is provably wrong doesn't make it unscientific. It just makes people who believe it provably wrong. They are likely to be stupid, I admit.