ohwilleke comments on Einstein's Arrogance - Less Wrong

30 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 25 September 2007 01:29AM

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Comment author: ohwilleke 12 July 2011 10:07:42PM 1 point [-]

The mathematical inconsistency between quantum mechanics and general relativity illustrates a key point. Most of the time the hypothesis set for new solutions, rather than being infnite, is null. It is often quite easy to illustrate that every available theory is wrong. Even if we know that our theory is clearly inconsistent with reality, we still keep using it until we come up with something better. Even if General Relativity were contradicted by some experimental discovery in 1963, Einstein would still have been lauded as a scientist for finding a theory that fit more data points that the previous one.

In science, and in a lot of other contexts, simply showing that a theory could be right, is much more important the establishing to any degree of statistical significance that it is right.