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> You have, multiple times now, refused to notice that a statement of the form "If A, then B" is one that can be absolutely established to be true, outside of e

by lutusp 13y ago

> You have, multiple times now, refused to notice that a statement of the form "If A, then B" is one that can be absolutely established to be true, outside of experiment. I have done nothing of the kind. "If A then B" is not science, and science -- physics -- is the topic of conversation. Let's recap, since you can't be stopped from wandering off the topic. You said this: >> If you assume that the observer is described by quantum mechanics, then the Everett Interpretation is logically required to be true. To the above pseudoscientific claim, I replied, saying: > Arthur Conan Doyle notwithstanding, in science the truth is not arrived at by eliminating the alternatives. Science requires positive evidence -- absence of contrary evidence doesn't support a given outlook. Were this not true, Bigfoot and the Loch Ness monster would win acceptance through lack of contrary evidence. Now if you want to discuss this issue, then stop wandering away from the topic into pointless philosophical tangents. Mathematics is not science, only science is science. > Next, you're obviously fond of Karl Popper's falsifiability criterion. Karl Popper didn't invent fasifiability, he discovered it. Science is not defined by Popper, it is defined by falsifiability. Falsifiability is science 101, and it's not a debate topic. > While showing blithe unawareness of how poor a description it is of actual science through the ages. I'm accustomed to having discussions with people who can't be bothered to examine their own ideas. So, even though you are probably never going to get this, let's perform a thought experiment in which falsifiability is not required for science, see where it takes us (I originally wrote this to counter the myth that psychology is a science): Let's say I'm a doctor and I've created a revolutionary cure for the common cold. My cure is to shake a dried gourd over the cold sufferer until he gets better. The cure might take a week, but it always works. My method is repeatable and perfectly reliable, and I've published my cure in a refereed scientific journal (there are now any number of phony refereed scientific journals). And, because (in this thought experiment) science can get along without defining theories, I'm under no obligation to try to explain my cure, or consider alternative explanations for my breakthrough — I only have to describe it, just like a psychologist. Because I've cured the common cold, and because I've met all the requirements that psychology recognizes for science, I deserve a Nobel Prize. Yes or no? Ask yourself what's wrong with this picture, and notice that the same thing is wrong with psychology — all description, no explanation, no established principles on which different psychologists agree, no effort to build consensus, and no unifying theories. > If you understand the last, then you'll understand that Einstein's rejection of QM ... You are, as usual, missing the point that Einstein objected until direct observational evidence became overwhelming in favor of quantum theories. He gave way before falsifiable evidence that, refutable in principle, was not refuted. The reason? Unlike you, he was a scientist, not a philosopher. > ... needs no more explanation than Fred Hoyle's rejection of the Big Bang theory ... Guess what happened to Fred Hoyle's rejection of Big Bang theory? It gave way before falsifiable evidence, evidence that remains in principle falsifiable to this day. The people over at the Discovery Institute (the source for Creationism and "Intelligent Design") will be delighted by your position on pseudoscience -- it's exactly the same as theirs. As far as they are concerned, you can call anything science. If you keep crashing into goal posts like falsifiability on your way to your personal objective, no problem -- move the goal posts. Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability Quote: "Science must be falsifiable. The scientific method can not be implemented without the theoretical possibilities of both disproof and verification." Circle the word you didn't understand and raise your hand.

chrislipa 13y ago
>Because I've cured the common cold, and because I've met all the requirements that psychology recognizes for science, I deserve a Nobel Prize. Yes or no? I take a different tack on this. The primary failing in the "science" of your thought experiment is that you had no control group to measure the effect of your cure against. If, on the other hand, your cure was statistically-significantly better than control in double-blinded randomized tests, then I think you would deserve the Nobel Prize, even if you couldn't proffer a theory for why it worked. Every theory humans have ever invented had at the bottom level something akin to "Well, those are just the rules and this is the way they work.". Lacking an elaborate, fleshed out framework to understand underlying mechanisms for your cure shouldn't even really be a serious problem, so long as your cure hypothesis is falsifiable.
btilly 13y ago
This conversation is done. Feel free to reply to this in any way you like, I'm not going to bother replying again. I am confident that anyone passing can make their own mind up about our discussion. For review, here are the basic facts. You have repeatedly failed to acknowledge that you can get definitive yes/no answers from questions of the type, "What does this theory predict for this situation?" You have repeatedly failed to acknowledge that this type of reasoning is part of the process of doing physics. You have repeatedly sidetracked to lectures on falsification where you ascribe all sorts of random beliefs to me that I do not, in fact, possess. There is a certain irony to you lecturing on falsification and the behavior of scientists, while refusing the acknowledge that the example of Fred Hoyle never accepting the Big Bang throws a wrench in your description. No, it is worse. You claimed that Fred Hoyle "gave way before falsifiable evidence" when, in fact, few knew that evidence better than he, and he never "gave way". (Instead he continued to adhere to steady state models which had tunable parameters that could continue to explain the evidence. A good Popperian would say that such tunable models cannot be part of science. At which point any historian of science should give a big belly laugh because they are.) Now you say that, I'm accustomed to having discussions with people who can't be bothered to examine their own ideas. Is that because they can't be bothered to examine their own ideas, or because you fail to recognize that they have? I will leave you with some interesting examples to ponder. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_anomaly http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_anomaly for a well-known experiment which appeared to falsify basic theories of physics for over a decade before the source of experimental error was definitively tracked down. When experiments can be reconciled indefinitely with theory by assuming experimental error, what experiment can conclusively falsify theory? Does this actually happen? I give you the example of Barbara McClintock. From the 1930s until the 1970s she carried on a line of research that falsified the developing genetic theory. As a result she was marginalized and her work generally ignored until, as a result of other developments, it became apparent in the 1970s that she was right. Then she was awarded the Nobel in Medicine for some of her discoveries from the 1950s. (See http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/1983/press.html http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/19... for the press release. The final paragraph is an acknowledgement of her situation.) If scientists actually worked through falsification, then they should have been all over her reproducible experiments decades earlier. That they didn't, stands as falsification of the theory that scientists proceed through falsification! But anyways, we're done. Hopefully at some point you reconsider your overly simplistic view of actual science. But I have reached my tolerance for continuing this discussion.

by lutusp 13y ago

chrislipa 13y ago

>Because I've cured the common cold, and because I've met all the requirements that psychology recognizes for science, I deserve a Nobel Prize. Yes or no? I take a different tack on this. The primary failing in the "science" of your thought experiment is that you had no control group to measure the effect of your cure against. If, on the other hand, your cure was statistically-significantly better than control in double-blinded randomized tests, then I think you would deserve the Nobel Prize, even if you couldn't proffer a theory for why it worked. Every theory humans have ever invented had at the bottom level something akin to "Well, those are just the rules and this is the way they work.". Lacking an elaborate, fleshed out framework to understand underlying mechanisms for your cure shouldn't even really be a serious problem, so long as your cure hypothesis is falsifiable.

btilly 13y ago

This conversation is done. Feel free to reply to this in any way you like, I'm not going to bother replying again. I am confident that anyone passing can make their own mind up about our discussion. For review, here are the basic facts. You have repeatedly failed to acknowledge that you can get definitive yes/no answers from questions of the type, "What does this theory predict for this situation?" You have repeatedly failed to acknowledge that this type of reasoning is part of the process of doing physics. You have repeatedly sidetracked to lectures on falsification where you ascribe all sorts of random beliefs to me that I do not, in fact, possess. There is a certain irony to you lecturing on falsification and the behavior of scientists, while refusing the acknowledge that the example of Fred Hoyle never accepting the Big Bang throws a wrench in your description. No, it is worse. You claimed that Fred Hoyle "gave way before falsifiable evidence" when, in fact, few knew that evidence better than he, and he never "gave way". (Instead he continued to adhere to steady state models which had tunable parameters that could continue to explain the evidence. A good Popperian would say that such tunable models cannot be part of science. At which point any historian of science should give a big belly laugh because they are.) Now you say that, I'm accustomed to having discussions with people who can't be bothered to examine their own ideas. Is that because they can't be bothered to examine their own ideas, or because you fail to recognize that they have? I will leave you with some interesting examples to ponder. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_anomaly http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_anomaly for a well-known experiment which appeared to falsify basic theories of physics for over a decade before the source of experimental error was definitively tracked down. When experiments can be reconciled indefinitely with theory by assuming experimental error, what experiment can conclusively falsify theory? Does this actually happen? I give you the example of Barbara McClintock. From the 1930s until the 1970s she carried on a line of research that falsified the developing genetic theory. As a result she was marginalized and her work generally ignored until, as a result of other developments, it became apparent in the 1970s that she was right. Then she was awarded the Nobel in Medicine for some of her discoveries from the 1950s. (See http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/1983/press.html http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/19... for the press release. The final paragraph is an acknowledgement of her situation.) If scientists actually worked through falsification, then they should have been all over her reproducible experiments decades earlier. That they didn't, stands as falsification of the theory that scientists proceed through falsification! But anyways, we're done. Hopefully at some point you reconsider your overly simplistic view of actual science. But I have reached my tolerance for continuing this discussion.