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HamiltonBrae t1_j3cdftf wrote

Reply to comment by NaimKabir in Occam’s Deepest Cut: Occam's Razor isn't a guide towards the truth—it *defines* the truth by NaimKabir

I think these arguments apply just as well for falsification. You can't be sure that a theory that has been falsified will stay falsified in the future and won't be re-validated.

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NaimKabir OP t1_j3cdv23 wrote

Thankfully just being falsified once at any point in space and time is enough to say a theory isn't generally correct for all space and time, so you can throw it out.

This asymmetry in how easy it is to prove a counterexample vs how easy it is to universally verify is why we stick with falsification as the main avenue for scientific progress.

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HamiltonBrae t1_j3cenu9 wrote

No, because you don't know if there was some mistake or something which means that the finding you got at that point in space and time will never be repeated or something like that. Just like how you occasionally get these big physics experiments which get some statistically significant result that for some reason dsiappears and what they thought they found didn't really turn out to be anything. This applies just as well to falsifying as verifying.

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NaimKabir OP t1_j3cfpo7 wrote

Ah yeah, in which case you recant that falsification. But as soon as you get one you're confident in, it's kinda falsified for good.

Whereas if you try verifying — you'll never know, since you can't test every instance in space in time.

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HamiltonBrae t1_j3cjct0 wrote

>But as soon as you get one you're confident in, it's kinda falsified for good.

But then how do you know you can be confident. This brings in the same circular issues you criticised induction as having... because it is induction.

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NaimKabir OP t1_j3cmvma wrote

Not quite, since it doesn't need to generalize, one counter example is enough. You need to be confident in just one counterexample.

In the verification scheme, you can't ever be confident because you could never test all examples ever.

In one case (falsification) confidence is at least possible, and in the other, it isn't—which makes one of them strictly better

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HamiltonBrae t1_j3ctdx5 wrote

It does need to generalize because if this single counter example was flawed then it completely invalidates the whole thing. You need to be sure that this single counter example is actually valid and that if you repeated it ad infinitum you would get the same result again and again and again which you can't be sure of. There maybe an irrelevant reason why thos counter example occurred. I think there is a very well known example that I can't remember specifically which is how the orbit of some planet in the solar system actually "falsified" Newtonian mechanics, however what was not taken into account was another body affecting the orbit of that planet which skewed the result, so it appeared to falsify it when it didn't. Now surely for every event of falsification, to be one hundred percent sure you are falsifying what you think you are, you need to rule out every single one of these alternative explanations.

i think ultimately, you have to verify that your falsification is valid.

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NaimKabir OP t1_j3d3znk wrote

Falsification is just when some other statement incompatible with a theory is "accepted". If you choose not to accept it again then the falsification doesn't occur. A falsification is also a single instance you are confident in. One experiment! If you do another experiment it's not a re-litigation of the previous falsification at time 1, it's actually just another falsification at time 2. You might choose not to accept Experiment 1s results for some reason, but Experiment 2 could still stand. You just need one instance you accept to falsify a theory.

To verify a theory you need to prove infinite cases

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HamiltonBrae t1_j3egndi wrote

>If you choose not to accept it again then the falsification doesn't occur.

Yes, which is the same problem that induction and verification has. You can infer and verify something then later find out that you can no longer accept it. It applies just as much to falsification as verification.

>One experiment! If you do another experiment it's not a re-litigation of the previous falsification at time 1, it's actually just another falsification at time 2

Well if you are talking about the same type of phenomenon explored several times, I don't see how it is different from the classic example in induction about the sun not rising the next day. In the induction example, sun rises on day 1 but not day 2, in the falsification example instance 1 might be the orbit of some planet and instance 2 might be the discovery that the orbit is affected by some other body. in neither example do verification or falsification are capable of permanently cementing the status of the theories. the finding of the sun not rising on day 2 might even be reversed if it rises on all the days after that and you find some good explanation of why it did not rise on that particular day. my example with the planet orbits depicts a single incidence of newtownan mechanics being falsified which can conceivably be reversed, or was actually reversed depending on how correct my example was.

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