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> Popper led us astray into a reductive outlook on science that led us directly to the replication crisis in the social sciences, Amy Cuddy and power poses and

by knzhou 7y ago

> Popper led us astray into a reductive outlook on science that led us directly to the replication crisis in the social sciences, Amy Cuddy and power poses and much more. People act like this is a mathematical problem and it can be fixed moving beyond p-values but it isn't. Popper's philosophy is baked into how physics is taught, possibly more so than any other field. The great majority of physicists wouldn't recognize the name, but would agree completely with the ideas. And we don't have a replication crisis.

ssivark 7y ago
> Popper's philosophy is baked into how physics is taught, possibly more so than any other field. Sounds ad-hoc. Please explain. Physics is a subject where for almost every topic (be it classical mechanics, optics, quantum physics, etc) there are several different frameworks (which are equivalent but distinct), and none of which can be "falsified" because they are all right, and deal with the same reality in different ways. As Sidney Coleman said: "The career of a young theoretical physicist consists of treating the harmonic oscillator in ever-increasing levels of abstraction.” Physics is also the subject where one is forced to realize that reality is nuanced enough that you cannot ascribe a single value to measurable quantities (repudiation of local realism) and measurements need not always return the same value. While it's true that physics has had experienced some key falsification/discovery events (most notably Michelson-Morley and the repudiation of ether), physics also has a rich history of approximate "effective theories" which are not wrong, but just limited in their domain of applicability, and might often be more useful than exact models. This idea has also been put on firmer footing over the last half century, with the concept of renormalization group flow. So I don't see any simplistic tie-up between Popperian falsification and physics.
- knzhou 7y ago
  > Physics is a subject where for almost every topic (be it classical mechanics, optics, quantum physics, etc) there are several different frameworks (which are equivalent but distinct), and none of which can be "falsified" because they are all right, and deal with the same reality in different ways. Precisely. It is exactly to the degree that we accept Popperian philosophy more than other fields that we are happy with this state of affairs -- we don't care about which theory is "metaphysically true", it's fine as long as the predictions of a theory work where the theory is supposed to apply. To put it another way, the criterion of falsifiability cuts both ways. It means we should test what we can test, and not agonize too much over things we can't. It is true that there is a simplistic, hardline reading of Popper which rejects effective theories, but I don't think that's a fair way to treat him. The limitations of the hardline view were well known in Popper's time.

by knzhou 7y ago

ssivark 7y ago

> Popper's philosophy is baked into how physics is taught, possibly more so than any other field. Sounds ad-hoc. Please explain. Physics is a subject where for almost every topic (be it classical mechanics, optics, quantum physics, etc) there are several different frameworks (which are equivalent but distinct), and none of which can be "falsified" because they are all right, and deal with the same reality in different ways. As Sidney Coleman said: "The career of a young theoretical physicist consists of treating the harmonic oscillator in ever-increasing levels of abstraction.” Physics is also the subject where one is forced to realize that reality is nuanced enough that you cannot ascribe a single value to measurable quantities (repudiation of local realism) and measurements need not always return the same value. While it's true that physics has had experienced some key falsification/discovery events (most notably Michelson-Morley and the repudiation of ether), physics also has a rich history of approximate "effective theories" which are not wrong, but just limited in their domain of applicability, and might often be more useful than exact models. This idea has also been put on firmer footing over the last half century, with the concept of renormalization group flow. So I don't see any simplistic tie-up between Popperian falsification and physics.

knzhou 7y ago
> Physics is a subject where for almost every topic (be it classical mechanics, optics, quantum physics, etc) there are several different frameworks (which are equivalent but distinct), and none of which can be "falsified" because they are all right, and deal with the same reality in different ways. Precisely. It is exactly to the degree that we accept Popperian philosophy more than other fields that we are happy with this state of affairs -- we don't care about which theory is "metaphysically true", it's fine as long as the predictions of a theory work where the theory is supposed to apply. To put it another way, the criterion of falsifiability cuts both ways. It means we should test what we can test, and not agonize too much over things we can't. It is true that there is a simplistic, hardline reading of Popper which rejects effective theories, but I don't think that's a fair way to treat him. The limitations of the hardline view were well known in Popper's time.