Falsifiability? Let's not be Naive. (Page 14)

chronology
chronology: Achilles, I know you find our views nonsense but we believe that the original Gene program codes running all life today was written a very long time ago. The story of Adam described how he was created as a hybrid of some already existing human like creature, possibly a Cro Magnon.
Personally I think a supernatural Being. God, created all the gene programs running today. I cannot deny it is not impossible some kind of ancient Astronauts created something here, it just seems more unlikely than saying God did so.
4 years ago Report
0
AchillesSinatra
AchillesSinatra: Yeah, it sounds a wee bit far fetched to me, friend.

But God bless ya
4 years ago Report
0
chronology
chronology: Do you have any suggestions for the origins of gene programs? These are definitely programs written by someone.
4 years ago Report
0
AchillesSinatra
AchillesSinatra: I've no idea.

All I can say is he's a good writer.
4 years ago Report
1
chronology
chronology: You hear so much speculation. Ancient Astronauts believers say the earth was originally a tourist planet. Complete with brothel's and war games shows for some civilization that has long since left. Other folks, who I agree with say that the original occupants of this planet were ruled by a very wealthy and powerful being called Satan. Satan went crazy and attempted to overthrow the supreme Authorities and the earth was devistated in the resulting war. Human life was a new project started after Satan was removed from his rulership here.

All this is just too much for many folks. But to me it is no more weird than believing an impossible story like evolution.
4 years ago Report
0
Angry Beaver
Angry Beaver: Or genesis
4 years ago Report
0
chronology
chronology: Angry, could not agree with you more. Educated folks have little patience with religion of any kind. Slop for the gullible peasants, they say. If there was any such visitors from outer space in the past surely they would have left some evidence they had been here, say the smart folks. And evolution has more holes in it than a food strainer.

It just comes down to what you accept as reliable facts.
4 years ago Report
0
AchillesSinatra
AchillesSinatra: For the past 24 hours there's been a cockroach in my bathroom upside-down with legs flailing.

Seems they are unable to re-invert themselves.

Two questions:

1. How did it get upside-down to begin with? (none of my doing)

2. Is it well adapted?
(Edited by AchillesSinatra)
4 years ago Report
0
AchillesSinatra
AchillesSinatra: This one won't be having any children any time soon, anyway.



"I don't expect you to re-invert, Mr Bondroach. I expect you to die. Bwahahahahahah!"

- Goldfinger
4 years ago Report
0
chronology
chronology: Achilles, curiously Old Chap I think I can answer this.
The programming of such insects seems to include a folder for getting out of some tight spots. I remember seeing a Silverfish insect once. Lovely little insects. This one had wandered into a thin ledge in my bathroom. I just noticed it and was about to help it off with a lift on some paper when the Silverfish just stopped and rolled off the ledge. It dropped into the bath so I still had to give him a lift out of the bath. But when trapped in a place, some insects have a programme to roll off and hope for the best. The cockroach probably did the same but landed on his back.
4 years ago Report
1
theHating
theHating: @achilles he's trying to scratch an itch
4 years ago Report
0
AchillesSinatra
AchillesSinatra: Zeffur and TheHating have both posted, in other threads, on reports of a star that is (apparently) older than the current estimate for the age of the universe. I thought I'd respond here for its relevance to the topic of falsifiability.

Once again, then, we see a (prima facie) theory-fact mismatch -- an "anomaly". Whatever theory/theories are implicated in this case -- presumably the Big Bang is one of them -- say such-and-such is the case; the facts say such-and-such is NOT the case.

This is nothing new, of course. I've been at pains to point out throughout the thread that the existence of theoretical anomalies (i.e., facts being at odds with theory) is a routine occurrence throughout the sciences.

In the particular case of cosmology, the existence of anomalies has been acknowledged since people started doing science. The Ptolemaic/Copernican theories were plagued with them, likewise for Newtonian gravitation; as for Einstein's general relativity... well, where do you think dark matter and dark energy came from? It is precisely because galaxies were not behaving remotely as GR would lead us to expect that DM and DE were postulated.

And if you do hear someone claim that his/her theory enjoys the unique status of being the only one in all the sciences that remains blissfully free of anomalies -- i.e., "fits all the facts" -- I suggest you be very cautious indeed. A perfect theory, eh?


I've also tried to highlight in this thread that in every such case of a fact-theory mismatch, the scientists involved have numerous options at their disposal:

1. Declare the theory falsified and renounce it.

This almost never happens, especially if the theory is a well established one. Moreover, as history bears witness, it NEVER happens until a replacement becomes available.

2. Do nothing.

Scratch your head and wonder what the heck's going on.

3. Try to find some way to assimilate the anomalous evidence into the theoretical paradigm.

This can be done in any number of ways. The scientist might, for example, depending on the discipline in question, posit the existence of an unknown planet, or a new subatomic particle, add an epicycle here and there, or conjure up a "cosmological constant" (as Einstein did), or a new level of selection, or ... some unknown force at work.


With regard the third option, I hope that another lesson to be learned from this thread is that a cherished theory can ALWAYS be shielded from refutation if its proponents are so determined.

Falsification can ALWAYS be resisted.

And it almost always is.
(Edited by AchillesSinatra)
4 years ago Report
0
Angry Beaver
Angry Beaver: See this is why we can't have nice things any more!
4 years ago Report
0
kittybobo34
kittybobo34: Seeing an old star is not so much an anomaly. The early universe was quite chaotic, this one could be from the other end of the universe traveling in our direction. Secondly when they announced the age of the universe, they pointed out that the age is based on the stars they can see, and we can only see about 14 billion years. Given the fact that we do not see an end point, it goes without saying that it could be much older.
4 years ago Report
0
theHating
theHating: Lol he saw the post of the star.

Now, to find pianos raining from the sky.
4 years ago Report
0
AchillesSinatra
AchillesSinatra: We often hear it said that if it's not falsifiable it's not scientific. Falsifiability, on this account, is the hallmark, or one of the hallmarks, of good science.

This doctrine, traceable to one man, Karl Popper, is widely embraced by the scientific community, perhaps not surprisingly since it paints a portrait which is at once heroic and flattering of the scientist as the disinterested, undogmatic, objective seeker of truth, ever ready to abandon his theories at the first whiff of disconfirming evidence.

Philosophers of science, by contrast, tend to be somewhat less sanguine, not least of all because, as history can testify, it bears little resemblance to how science is actually conducted.

Less well known is that the very same Karl Popper got himself into quite a bit of trouble for daring to suggest that the theory of evolution by natural selection fails to pass muster on his own criterion of falsifiability, thus does not qualify as being scientific. Steven Weinberg explains...

"Another point, ignored almost always by journalists and often by historians of science, is that theories usually exist on two levels. On the one hand, there are general ideas, which are not specific theories, but frameworks for specific theories. One example of such a general idea is the theory of evolution by natural selection, which leaves open the question of the mechanism of heredity. [...] These general ideas are very hard to test because by themselves they do not lead to specific predictions. This has sadly led Karl Popper to conclude that because such general ideas can't be falsified, they can't be regarded as truly scientific."

(from "Facing Up", essay 8, "The Methods of Science ... and Those by Which We Live" )



Out of fairness, though, two points should be noted:

1. By calling the theory of evolution "unscientific", Popper was not thereby condemning it to the miasma of pseudoscience. For him, rather, the ToE was a valuable "metaphysical framework", not itself scientific, but within which important scientific research can be conducted.

2. Perhaps not unlike Galileo faced with the instruments of torture, Popper later recanted.

(Edited by AchillesSinatra)
4 years ago Report
0
theHating
4 years ago Report
0
Angry Beaver
Angry Beaver: Shtoylish indeed!
4 years ago Report
0
AchillesSinatra
AchillesSinatra: As noted earlier in the thread, the criterion of falsifiability to demarcate that which is scientific from that which is not was the, er, brainchild of one man: Sir Karl Popper.

Popper's demarcation criterion, though still much vaunted by scientists themselves, is given short shrift these days by philosophers. Associated problems are almost too numerous to list, but here's just one.

(In what follows I deliberately ignore various complications for the sake of clarity. And for "theory", feel free to substitute "hypothesis", "law", "statement", etc. )

With a nice, well behaved deterministic theory T, the following schema is obeyed:


1. It is a consequence/prediction of T that a certain observation O must occur.

(For example Einstein's general relativity predicts that the path of light MUST be "bent" by massive objects)

2. If O is indeed observed, we say that T has been confirmed. Not proven, mind you! Rather, T now enjoys some degree of evidential support.

3. If O is not observed, inasmuch as "not O" is logically inconsistent with T, we say that T has been falsified.


Now, falsification is no great indignity in and of itself. At the very least we have now learned that T is untrue and can march ahead with new Ts to test. Moreover, T satisfies Popper's falsifiability criterion, thus constitutes respectable science, even if it happens to be untrue.

Alas -- at least from Sir Karl's perspective -- not all of what we intuitively think of as good science is deterministic. A great many scientific theories are of a probabilistic or statistical nature. And probabilistic theories are logically consistent with any observation whatsoever!

Now, how can a theory that is consistent with any observation under the Sun be said to be "deductively falsified", as Popper had hoped?

Brilliantly sharp and witty as ever, the late great Australian philosopher David Stove frames Popper's dilemma thus:



"His most influential act of sabotage occurs in a part of "The Logic of Scientific Discovery" which is seldom read, or at any rate remembered, by any but adepts. The instance must have been sufficiently grievous, because even people not otherwise apt to criticize Popper complained of it, and what is more remarkable still, Popper himself later said in print that what he had written at this place was "not to my own full satisfaction". To readers in whom the critical faculty is not entirely extinct, the episode has afforded a certain amount of hilarity. To our other authors [Kuhn, Lakatos, and Feyerabend - Achilles], by contrast, what it afforded was a model and a license for their own efforts in the way of sabotaging logical expressions. If what Popper did here was not to his own full satisfaction, it certainly was to theirs.

The propositions in question were unrestricted statements of factual probability: that is, contingent unrestricted propositions of the form "The probability of F being G is = r", where 0 < r < 1. For example, H: "The probability of a human birth being male = 0.9". Concerning such propositions Popper had fairly painted himself into a corner. For he had maintained (1) that some such propositions are scientific; (2) that none of them were falsifiable (i.e. inconsistent with some observation-statement); while he had also maintained (3) that only falsifiable propositions are scientific. (The reason why (2) is true is, of course, that H is consistent even with, for example, the observation statement E: "The observed relative frequency of males among births in human history so far is = 0.51" ).

Popper draws attention with admirable explicitness to this---to put it mildly---contretemps. He puts it almost equally mildly himself, however. For he insists on calling the conjunction of (1), (2) and (3) a "problem" ("the problem of the decidability" of propositions like H); when in fact of course it is a contradiction. The reader can hardly fail to be reminded of Hume's complaint about the absurdity of the "custom of calling a difficulty what pretends to be a demonstration and endeavoring by that means to elude its force and evidence". But Popper's `solution' to his problem was far more remarkable than even his description of it, and indeed was of breathtaking originality.

It consists---or I should say, it appears to consist, because there is another interpretation of Popper possible here, though one which makes his situation far less satisfactory still, which will be discussed later---in making frequent references to what it is that scientists do when they find by experience that s, the observed relation frequency of G among F's, is very different from r, the hypothesized value of the probability of an F being G. What scientists do in such circumstances, Popper says, is to act on a methodological convention to neglect extreme probabilities (such as the joint truth of E and H); on a "methodological rule or a decision to regard [...] [a high] negative degree of corroboration as falsification", that is, to regard E as falsifying H.

Well, no doubt they do. But obviously, as a solution to Popper's problem, this is of that kind for which old-fashioned boys' weeklies were once famous: "With one bound Jack was free!". What will it profit a man, if he has caught himself in a flat contradiction, to tell us about something that scientists do, or about something non-scientists don't do, or anything of that sort? To a logical problem such as the inconsistency of (1), (2) and (3) there is of course---can it really be necessary to say this?---NO solution, except solutions which begin with an admission that at least one of the three is false. But least of all can there be any sociological solution."

-- David Stove, "Popper and After"





The scientific method, Sir Karl? Looks like we're back to good old-fashioned common sense again.
(Edited by AchillesSinatra)
4 years ago Report
0
AchillesSinatra
AchillesSinatra: We often hear not only scientists, but also their opponents, claim that such-and-such a theory or hypothesis has been "disproven" or "refuted" or "falsified" (the three terms are synonymous), or that such-and-such a theory WOULD be disproven if such-and-such were observed.

For example, physicists are apt to say things like "General relativity has passed every test so far. But if any evidence appears in the future that contradicts it, the theory will have been falsified."

This, of course, is a very misleading way to talk. What normally happens when evidence is at odds with a major theory such as general relativity, is not that the theory is declared false and ignominiously dumped, but rather that the so-called "background assumptions" or "auxiliary hypotheses" are tweaked.

Where do you think "dark energy" came from, after all? It was postulated precisely because the universe was NOT behaving in accordance with the predictions of general relativity.

Similarly, we routinely hear devotees of "The theory of evolution" (whatever the hell that is) declare that were such-and-such to be unearthed--a preCambrian rabbit perhaps--the theory would fall apart. Meanwhile, the Creationist nutters in these forums insist that "The theory" has ALREADY been refuted.

What I've been trying to emphasize in this thread is that, good intentions notwithstanding, all such proclamations should be taken with a pinch of salt. In matters of empirical science, there is no such thing as a be-all-and-end-all, logical or definitive refutation. A cherished theory can always be protected against falsification--if its proponents are stubborn and ingenious enough--by resort to the kind of tweaking I alluded to above (dark energy).



Nobel Prize laureate, British biologist Peter Medawar, shares his own first-hand experience with the illusory nature of scientific falsification . . . (at the end of the passage, he quotes philosopher of science Ernest Nagel.)




"I can remember forming the opinion, as a young research worker, that cells long maintained in culture outside the body undergo a transformation into the cancerous state, but dropped it because of the mistaken belief that transplantation experiments had already proved the data untenable. My reasoning was that, if long-cultivated cells were in fact malignant (as many are now known to be) they should grow progressively, as malignant tumors do, when reimplanted into the body. In fact they did not do so, so the hypothesis was disproved.

Unfortunately the act of disproof was itself erroneous: we now know that such a test could only have been valid if the cultivated cells contained no transplantation antigens not also present in the organism into which they were implanted; and even this test would have been unreliable if the cultivated cells had acquired new tumor-specific antigens during their growth outside the body.

It is indeed true that ". . . disproof of a hypothesis is contingent on the stability of the theories employed in interpreting matters of fact, so that the refutation of a supposed explanation may be no more definitive than its verification" "


(Peter Medawar, "Induction and Intuition" )
(Edited by AchillesSinatra)
3 years ago Report
0
AchillesSinatra
AchillesSinatra: One of the myths--originating with Karl Popper--that I've been fulminating against in this thread goes something like this:

"In science, evidence is everything. When the observational evidence contradicts the facts (or "conflicts with the facts" or "fails to fit the facts", etc., etc.) then that theory has been falsified and must be abandoned."



Doubtless, there are such cases as that described above. This might happen, say, when a lone scientist, or small group thereof, is entertaining a minor hypothesis, an experiment is performed, contrary evidence is exposed and, as an upshot, said hypothesis is DECLARED (not proven to be, mind you) false, and shelved.

On the other hand, however, where a major theory is involved, with a great deal invested in it by a worldwide community of practitioners, AND NO ALTERNATIVE AVAILABLE, the above scenario is almost never observed. What happens instead is normally that (at least some) scientists will try to find some way to RECONCILE the recalcitrant facts with the theory.

Consider, for example, this (partly relevant) telling passage from David Wootton's magnificent "Galileo: Watcher of the Skies" (p253):

"But almost equally powerful was the conviction [of Galileo - me] that knowledge is about abstractions, and that it can go beyond and even against the evidence of our senses. Thus Galileo praised Copernicus for holding firm to his conviction that the planets (including the Earth) go around the sun, even when the evidence of the senses directly contradicted his theories"


Now, notice what's happening. We have a case where the facts/evidence are in conflict with a major theory, in this case the Copernican heliostatic model of the cosmos.

Rather than denouncing the theory as false and advocating its abandonment, what we see instead is one of the greatest of all scientists (Galileo) COMMENDING a fellow scientific giant for sticking to his guns DESPITE prima-facie contradictory evidence.


What is this contradictory evidence that Galileo speaks of anyway? What follows is just a sample:

Well, let's see how things looked circa 1600 or so. To accept the Copernican model as a literal representation of reality (as opposed to a mere instrument of calculation; a position the Church had no objection to) one would have to bite, inter alia, the following bullets:

(1) Due to the diurnal rotation of the Earth, you are currently hurtling through space roughly, depending on your latitude, at the cruising speed of a Boeing 747.

(2) Due to the annual revolution of the Earth around the Sun, in addition to the above rotational hurtle, you are also zipping through the firmament at an even more dizzying rate of knots; the kind of speed that only Scotsmen can attain when presented with their bar bill.

You feel any of that? Imagine being told that there was a magnitude 9.1 earthquake underway; but you just don't feel it. Why, it's almost enough to drive a man to ridicule. And it did.

(3) If, as Copernicus and Galileo claimed, the Earth vacillated between one side of the Sun and the other, then we would expect to observe the phenomenon of stellar parallax. The apparent position of closer, supposedly "fixed", heavenly bodies should shift with respect to their more distant sidereal brethren, most noticeably every six months. Hold out a finger in front of you, sway your head from side to side, focus on a distant object (the cat on the mat, say) and watch what happens.

Stellar parallax was not observable in the 16/17th century, the period in question, and was not observed at all till centuries later.



In each case, then, theory was at odds with the evidence of our senses: the FACTS!

Now, the vast majority of scientists (not just the Church folks) of the period DID feel that the Copernican theory was thereby falsified and ought to be consigned to the scrap heap.

But geniuses see that little bit further.
(Edited by AchillesSinatra)
3 years ago Report
0
AchillesSinatra
AchillesSinatra: From my second post above:

"What I've been trying to emphasize in this thread is that, good intentions notwithstanding, all such proclamations should be taken with a pinch of salt. In matters of empirical science, there is no such thing as a be-all-and-end-all, logical or definitive refutation. A cherished theory can always be protected against falsification--if its proponents are stubborn and ingenious enough--by resort to the kind of tweaking I alluded to above (dark energy)."



So what kind of "tweaking" did Galileo resort to in order to "protect a cherished theory against refutation"?

Well, he invented an entire new physics for one thing--perhaps before his lunchtime spaghetti--to ward off criticisms from proponents of the regnant Aristotelian paradigm ("If we're spinning through space at breakneck speed, why don't birds in flight get thrown off into space?" etc,. etc.)


As for the absence of observable stellar parallax, he (and Copernicus too) said this: "Obviously the stars are much farther away than we had thought "


Now, do you see what I mean about it always being possible to guard a theory against falsification?
3 years ago Report
0
MJ59
MJ59: OMG! They killed Achilles!

You bastards!

lol
3 years ago Report
0