Newton's Flaming Laser Sword

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Alder

by voldemort1968 • 4 years ago

5 3 4 years ago

en.wikipedia.org

Newtonian insistence on ensuring that any statement is testable by observation ... undoubtedly cuts out the crap, it also seems to cut out almost everything else as well.

Wow, there's a little thought-grenade for the "that's not falsifiable" crowd...I had to read his source article to really (well, and very basically) appreciate what he was getting at.

I do agree with this idea; once you are that insistent on testable stuff, once you see it as _the_ hammer for every nai...err, problem, you are basically the stubborn hermetic hold-out as far as the broader conceptual space is concerned.

Alder seems to aim more at the social space, but I think it's a bigger problem than his dinner-party-style example would indicate.

It may even be important for people like that to define for themselves how and when the imagination is useful...

(There is also a broader question about sets of psychological tooling which would be pretty fascinating to reconcile with this kind of thought model. I can think of at least a few groups of people who would have a pretty good counter to an argument like this, especially one with a winner-takes-universe feel to it)

credit_guy• 4 years ago

All right, I'll bite. What's an instance of a non-trivial scientific statement that's non-falsifiable? Can you convince me to care about it?

themodelplumber2• 4 years ago

Caring isn't a logical bar, it's a subjective-values bar.

Briefly, I can't tell if your question is really getting at the point I'm thinking about. I also don't know your background and I'm not even sure you understand where I'm coming from, so there would be a lot of ground to cover before any convincing of someone to care would be on the table for me.

Newton's Flaming Laser Sword

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