shokwave comments on How to Fix Science - Less Wrong

50 Post author: lukeprog 07 March 2012 02:51AM

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Comment author: shokwave 09 March 2012 07:49:52AM 5 points [-]

In principle, you can't strictly falsify a theory empirically any more (or less) than you can verify one.

This throws the baby out with the bathwater; we can falsify and verify to degrees. Refusing the terms verify and falsify because we are not able to assign infinite credence seems like a mistake.

Comment author: metaphysicist 10 March 2012 11:19:33PM 0 points [-]

This throws the baby out with the bathwater; we can falsify and verify to degrees. Refusing the terms verify and falsify because we are not able to assign infinite credence seems like a mistake.

I agree; that's why "strictly." But you seem to miss the point, which is that falsification and verification are perfectly symmetric: whether you call the glass half empty or half full on either side of the equation wasn't my concern.

Two basic criticisms apply to Popperian falsificationism: 1) it ignores verification (although the "verisimilitude" doctrine tries to overcome this limitation); and 2) it does assign infinite credence to falsification.

No. 2 doesn't comport with the principles of Bayesian inference, but seems part of LW Bayesianism (your term):

I]n your theory A, you can predict X with probability 1...

This allowance of a unitary probability assignment to evidence conditional on a theory is a distortion of Bayesian inference. The distortion introduces an artificial asymmetry into the Bayesian handling of verification versus falsification. It is irrational to pretend—even conditionally—to absolute certainty about an empirical prediction.