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DanielLC comments on Religion's Claim to be Non-Disprovable - Less Wrong
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The difference is that ethics are not falsifiable. This leads me to believe there are no ethical truths.
The lack of ethics are also not falsifiable. By the same logic, you could say that there must be ethical truths.
Why must everything that exists be falsifiable? If there was a particle that didn't react to any of the four forces, its existence would be unfalsifiable. Is that any reason for it to not exist? If you had two non-interacting universe, by your logic each could say that the other doesn't exist. Certainly two universes isn't the same as no universes.
Although, each wouldn't know about the other... so maybe they would be justified in inferring that the other doesn't exist.
(After all, invisible fairies could be hiding in your attic right now, provided they are invisible, inaudible, massless, permeable to all substances...)
Say what you will about them being justified. They're still wrong.
Um... If there's a particle which does not interact with anything in the observable universe, then the state of the universe would be exactly the same if that particle did not exist. While we can go about postulating the existence of a myriad of such particles, the entire idea of Occam's razor is that it is easier to just say that things which cannot possibly affect the universe don't exist.
Why are you suggesting saying it doesn't exist? Because it's easier?
Because there's no evidence of it.
But there's also no evidence against it. Just don't update your priors. Don't pick the simplest explanation in the set and claim it's the only possible one.
It's not the only possible one, but I'm going to act as if it doesn't exist because I have no evidence it exists and because there's no reason to expect that to change.
Ask yourself, "What's your anticipated experience?"
If you don't have one, how can you even say you have a belief?
I have a past experience that leads me to predict essentially no direct experiences yet that I have nonetheless have not forgotten. For example, if I remember sending the relativistic rocket outside my future light-cone or towards a black hole. I still believe it probably exists.
Suppose someone offers you what's either an experience machine or an omnipotence machine. As much fun as an experience machine is, you know other people need you enough that it's important not to enter it. An omnipotence machine will let you help these people much more efficiently, so it would be very important to enter. Your anticipated experiences are the same either way, yet you do not value each possibility the same. If you use the machine, you clearly believe it's an omnipotence machine. If not, you believe it's an experience machine.
If there were compelling theoretical reasons, I might suppose that it existed. For example,
I'd hazard that they exist, not that it would matter.
In that case I'd figure that they probably exist. Otherwise, I'd figure that they probably don't. In either case, they might exist.