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He says: Popper’s principle implies: (1) Your guesses and opinions have to be testable. They have to say what will not happen. Beware of vague predictions that

by DavidSJ 17y ago

He says: Popper’s principle implies: (1) Your guesses and opinions have to be testable. They have to say what will not happen. Beware of vague predictions that are compatible with any outcome! But that is Popper's view as to the demarcation of science. Popper was not of the view that science is the only realm of legitimate knowledge. And it's in conflict with: If all knowledge depends on physical measurement, then not only do you lose truth, beauty, and love, you also lose mathematics, logic, and even epistemology!

tlb 17y ago
Truth, beauty and love can be tested. If I think someone loves me, I can hug them and see how they hug back. If I think something's beautiful, I can hang it on my wall next to something else I think is beautiful, and see if I still like it next week. Truths can be tested by finding & testing physical implications of that truth. None of these tests are absolute Popper-grade refutations, but they're good enough to be useful. Startups are generally based on some hypothesis (like "people want to communicate by multicasting 140-character messages"). Not refutable, exactly, but testable by building a company around it. Smart founders keep track of their hypotheses and are always looking for evidence for and against them.
- yters 17y ago
  Right, testability doesn't necessarily mean physical measurements.
- swombat 17y ago
  The existence of the concept of truth cannot be tested. It must be assumed. It is axiomatic to our thought processes.
  - darkxanthos 17y ago
    Exactly... and so it's possible to have other knowledge that can not be tested. I would just add to not be naive enough to believe everything you touch is this very rare special kind of truth. It's a dangerous blind path we'd walk then.
- jimbokun 17y ago
  "I can hang it on my wall next to something else I think is beautiful, and see if I still like it next week." You know if you still like it, but you don't know if it is beautiful. You might like ugly things.
  - Arkanin 17y ago
    "Beauty" is an aesthetic concept of the mind that varies between each person, not a property that you can give to an object. The object is beautiful because its perceiver finds it to be so; without the perceiver, there is no beauty. Therefore, it is a mistake to talk about beauty as an intrinsic property ("X is beautiful") when it is actually a perception ("Jim finds X beautiful."). When we say "X is beautiful", it is actually shorthand for "Lots of people find X beautiful", or "The consensus is that X is found to be beautiful". /aspie
    - jimbokun 17y ago
      '"Beauty" is an aesthetic concept of the mind that varies between each person, not a property that you can give to an object.' Not everyone would agree to this. There are people who believe that objective beauty really is "out there" in the world, independent of human judgement. Your opinion is very fashionable at the moment, particularly among academics and intellectuals, and similar arguments are applied to morality and anything else not subject to empirical investigation. But as I said, this way of thinking is by no means universal.
      - Arkanin 17y ago
        But what, other than intelligent beings, can ponder the concept of beauty? When we say something is beautiful, we mean it is aesthetically pleasing, and without a perceiver of an object, there is nothing to be aesthetically pleased. If you believe in god, space aliens, etc., we can shift the admirer of beauty to another perceiver, but still, without the perceiver there is no concept of beauty ascribed to the object.
  - tlb 17y ago
    If I like ugly things, great. I can find art I enjoy for cheap. People are weirdly insecure about their taste in visual art. Nobody worries "Uh-oh, what if I like music that's actually bad?" I guess at least with bad music, you feel like you have company. If you're into Eminem you'll meet other people with Eminem T-shirts, but you don't see people with Thomas Kinkade or Jeff Koons T-shirts.

by DavidSJ 17y ago

tlb 17y ago

Truth, beauty and love can be tested. If I think someone loves me, I can hug them and see how they hug back. If I think something's beautiful, I can hang it on my wall next to something else I think is beautiful, and see if I still like it next week. Truths can be tested by finding & testing physical implications of that truth. None of these tests are absolute Popper-grade refutations, but they're good enough to be useful. Startups are generally based on some hypothesis (like "people want to communicate by multicasting 140-character messages"). Not refutable, exactly, but testable by building a company around it. Smart founders keep track of their hypotheses and are always looking for evidence for and against them.

yters 17y ago
Right, testability doesn't necessarily mean physical measurements.
swombat 17y ago
The existence of the concept of truth cannot be tested. It must be assumed. It is axiomatic to our thought processes.
- darkxanthos 17y ago
  Exactly... and so it's possible to have other knowledge that can not be tested. I would just add to not be naive enough to believe everything you touch is this very rare special kind of truth. It's a dangerous blind path we'd walk then.
jimbokun 17y ago
"I can hang it on my wall next to something else I think is beautiful, and see if I still like it next week." You know if you still like it, but you don't know if it is beautiful. You might like ugly things.
- Arkanin 17y ago
  "Beauty" is an aesthetic concept of the mind that varies between each person, not a property that you can give to an object. The object is beautiful because its perceiver finds it to be so; without the perceiver, there is no beauty. Therefore, it is a mistake to talk about beauty as an intrinsic property ("X is beautiful") when it is actually a perception ("Jim finds X beautiful."). When we say "X is beautiful", it is actually shorthand for "Lots of people find X beautiful", or "The consensus is that X is found to be beautiful". /aspie
  - jimbokun 17y ago
    '"Beauty" is an aesthetic concept of the mind that varies between each person, not a property that you can give to an object.' Not everyone would agree to this. There are people who believe that objective beauty really is "out there" in the world, independent of human judgement. Your opinion is very fashionable at the moment, particularly among academics and intellectuals, and similar arguments are applied to morality and anything else not subject to empirical investigation. But as I said, this way of thinking is by no means universal.
    - Arkanin 17y ago
      But what, other than intelligent beings, can ponder the concept of beauty? When we say something is beautiful, we mean it is aesthetically pleasing, and without a perceiver of an object, there is nothing to be aesthetically pleased. If you believe in god, space aliens, etc., we can shift the admirer of beauty to another perceiver, but still, without the perceiver there is no concept of beauty ascribed to the object.
- tlb 17y ago
  If I like ugly things, great. I can find art I enjoy for cheap. People are weirdly insecure about their taste in visual art. Nobody worries "Uh-oh, what if I like music that's actually bad?" I guess at least with bad music, you feel like you have company. If you're into Eminem you'll meet other people with Eminem T-shirts, but you don't see people with Thomas Kinkade or Jeff Koons T-shirts.