cousin_it comments on The Strong Occam's Razor - Less Wrong

13 Post author: cousin_it 11 November 2010 05:28PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (71)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: cousin_it 11 November 2010 09:13:55PM *  1 point [-]

How can we distinguish statements that are "about reality" from statements that aren't, if we just threw away the criteria of predictive power and verification?

Comment author: Matt_Simpson 11 November 2010 09:57:26PM *  1 point [-]

How about counterfactual predictive power and verification? If I could observe the inside of that box, then I could see a difference between the two theories.

I realize this opens a potential can of worms, i.e., what sort of counterfactuals are we allowed to consider? But in any case, this is how I've understood the basic idea of falsifiability. Compare to Yvain's logs of the universe idea. (He's doing something different with it, I know)