On 11-12-15 06:11 PM, Joshua Cude wrote:
Falsifiability just means it should be possible to conceive of an experimental result that would contradict the assertion. It's intended to avoid religious claims in a scientific arena.
It actually has much broader applications than just that. Hang around the crackpot forums long enough and you'll encounter any number of theories that are neither religious nor falsifiable.
In fact, in my experience, the assertion that X must be falsifiable is most often used where "X" is a full-blown *theory* rather than a particular "argument" or single assertion. A theory which is not falsifiable is considered "invalid", or, perhaps more accurately if less flamboyantly, it can be termed "purely speculative". Speculation can eventually lead to a valid (falsifiable) theory, of course. However, when the speculator is running from arguments which would shoot down the speculation if it ever stood still long enough for someone to draw a bead on it, that's not likely to happen.
This is, of course, something which has come up in the context of string theory. I have often heard it asked, "Has string theory made any testable predictions yet?". (I am clueless regarding string theory, BTW, and have no idea what the answer to that question is.) A "theory" which makes no testable predictions is, of course, not falsifiable, and hence should not really be dignified with the name of "theory".
A nice example of a non-falsifiable bit of atheistic speculation is this one: You really live in the 33rd century, and the apparent "real world" is just a full-immersion video game which you happen to be playing.
A related notion: You're dreaming right now, and the shreds of dream which you may remember from last night are actually distorted memories of your waking life.
One slightly more serious one: There is, indeed, an aether, but Lorentz contraction due to motion through the aether happens to be exactly the same as the Fitzgerald contraction predicted by SR, and the time effects due to motion through the aether also match the time dilation predicted by SR. Consequently no experiment will show a different result due to the presence of the aether, and despite the existence of a distinguished rest frame, there is no way to determine which frame that is. (This has been called "Lorentz ether theory", or "LET" for short, and it supposedly embodies the final version of the Lorentz's theory.)
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Take for example a claim that a fission bomb (or hydrogen bomb) used sleight of hand to produce the claimed energy output.
Did you by any chance ever read The Jesus Factor?
