On Sun, May 18, 2014 at 04:10:24PM -0700, [email protected] wrote: > I'm going to bullet point the key, hard-to-vary, components that may or may > not result in falsification. In doing so, I will be stating not my personal > preference, but the long standing convention. In light of this faithfulness > simply to what it actually is, I feel a little aggrieved by the stream of > unrelenting dismissiveness, resorts to claims of unintelligibility on my > part, allegations of ill motivation, irrelevance and the rest of it. > > So I will bullet point it here, very briefly. And if the same individuals > want to continue the way they are going, I shall suggest they put their > money where their mouths are, and lay cash wager which one of us is > correct, and we shall take our dispute to some of the major and > esteemed leading scientists of our time. And then we shall see. > > Falsification. > > 1. A precise, non-trivial prediction must be found in a theory, with the > following two key characteristics: It says something NEW about the > world, that goes over and above an Explanation of that which we > already know.
This is probably too big a bar, although clearly a theory that jumps this hurdle will be more interesting. Given the new theory and an incumbant with with equal predictive power (ie no new testable predictions on which the theories differ), we can still discriminate on based on Occam's razor. Initially, heliocentrism actually performed less well than Ptolemy's epicycle theory, but did much better on Occam. Clearly, COMP has not yet jumped that bar. Potentially it may do so, once all the consequences of the X_1 modal logic is worked out. So I wouldn't crack the champagne, but it is reasonable to pursue working out the consequence of X_1. It's just not going to be me - I'm too far behind the 8 ball on that one :). > Second, that it may be formulated with complete separation > and independence from the theory from which it spawns, and stated entirely > within the pre-existing realm of the incumbent hard won knowledge already > in place. This is the first layer of separation. The theory from the > prediction, the prediction in terms of the incumbent theory of the world. > Yes - this makes sense. -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics [email protected] University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au Latest project: The Amoeba's Secret (http://www.hpcoders.com.au/AmoebasSecret.html) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
