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Thanks for taking the time to explain that, much appreciated. I was not aware about the epistemology / philosophical implications of the "it's magic" comment.

by throwaway201606 7y ago

Thanks for taking the time to explain that, much appreciated. I was not aware about the epistemology / philosophical implications of the "it's magic" comment. I took the literally reading of your comment. Can you point me at some stuff I can look at to start learning a little more about this - sounds like the kind of interesting stuff I should be reading late into the night rather than working on the sleep I should be getting.

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 7y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Falsifiability https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Falsifiability could be starting points? I dunno. And, yeah, "it's magic" is just a placeholder for a random ad-hoc rationalization that you can make up in any such situation that would explain the given observation while some apparently contradicting claim is also true. The problem is when there is (almost?) no observation that would make you go "ah, ok, I guess this claim is bullshit after all", because you can always make up some story as to why it might not be.
- throwaway201606 7y ago
  Thank you, much appreciated.