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I don't see these sorts of claims as falsifiable.

by vba616 4y ago

adrianN 4y ago
History is not a field where it's easy to make falsifiable claims (until we invent time machines). But I don't think that completely prevents us from learning something from the past.
- hulitu 4y ago
  "History is written by historians." Frank Herbert
- hulitu 4y ago
  > History is not a field where it's easy to make falsifiable claims (until we invent time machines). But I don't think that completely prevents us from learning something from the past. "History is written by historians." Frank Herbert
jelliclesfarm 4y ago
Question: Is evolution falsifiable?
- joelhoffman 4y ago
  Of course it is. What has that got to do with anything?
  - jelliclesfarm 4y ago
    It was a rhetoric to “I don't see these sorts of claims as falsifiable.” Creationists regularly posit that Evolution is not falsifiable. Popperian falsifiability is being abandoned these days and instead Neumann’s definition of Science and scientific theory is increasingly embraced.
irrational 4y ago
Isn’t that true of almost every field that deals with humans? Health - coffee/alcohol is good for you this week and bad for you next week Sociology and Psychology - is anything in these fields truly falsifiable? History - same
- BurningPenguin 4y ago
  That coffee and alcohol thing only happens in certain tabloids and other trash media. Both have positive and negative effects on your health depending on how much you drink of it. Having a little is fine, drinking it 24/7 is not.
labster 4y ago
The civil war in Syria started with a famine, which is certainly evidence for the claim. Culture preserves adaptation strategies long after those ideas become maladaptive. But nature is bad enough. As a climatologist, what keeps me up at night is Bangladesh. A couple meters of sea level rise, and a direct hit from a super typhoon, and we could easily see millions of refugees. And as India continues its tilt towards a Hindu state, conflict could also happen there.
mftb 4y ago
We apply a different standard here, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence".
mhh__ 4y ago
The concept is equivalent to "Bring a coat, it might rain" not "It's going to rain"
csee 4y ago
It'll be as falsifiable as many other questions that historians grapple with (e.g. did famine X lead to conflict/instability Y?), but only once the warming has happened and we're looking retrospectively. The best we can do now is an educated guess that large amounts warming will lead to migration away from hotter countries which will lead to some instability.

I don't see these sorts of claims as falsifiable.

by vba616 4y ago

I don't see these sorts of claims as falsifiable.

History is not a field where it's easy to make falsifiable claims (until we invent time machines). But I don't think that completely prevents us from learning something from the past.

hulitu 4y ago
"History is written by historians." Frank Herbert
hulitu 4y ago
> History is not a field where it's easy to make falsifiable claims (until we invent time machines). But I don't think that completely prevents us from learning something from the past. "History is written by historians." Frank Herbert

jelliclesfarm 4y ago

Question: Is evolution falsifiable?

joelhoffman 4y ago
Of course it is. What has that got to do with anything?
- jelliclesfarm 4y ago
  It was a rhetoric to “I don't see these sorts of claims as falsifiable.” Creationists regularly posit that Evolution is not falsifiable. Popperian falsifiability is being abandoned these days and instead Neumann’s definition of Science and scientific theory is increasingly embraced.

irrational 4y ago

Isn’t that true of almost every field that deals with humans? Health - coffee/alcohol is good for you this week and bad for you next week Sociology and Psychology - is anything in these fields truly falsifiable? History - same

BurningPenguin 4y ago
That coffee and alcohol thing only happens in certain tabloids and other trash media. Both have positive and negative effects on your health depending on how much you drink of it. Having a little is fine, drinking it 24/7 is not.

labster 4y ago

The civil war in Syria started with a famine, which is certainly evidence for the claim. Culture preserves adaptation strategies long after those ideas become maladaptive. But nature is bad enough. As a climatologist, what keeps me up at night is Bangladesh. A couple meters of sea level rise, and a direct hit from a super typhoon, and we could easily see millions of refugees. And as India continues its tilt towards a Hindu state, conflict could also happen there.

mftb 4y ago

We apply a different standard here, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence".

mhh__ 4y ago

The concept is equivalent to "Bring a coat, it might rain" not "It's going to rain"

csee 4y ago

It'll be as falsifiable as many other questions that historians grapple with (e.g. did famine X lead to conflict/instability Y?), but only once the warming has happened and we're looking retrospectively. The best we can do now is an educated guess that large amounts warming will lead to migration away from hotter countries which will lead to some instability.