27chaos comments on Rationality Quotes Thread June 2015 - Less Wrong

7 Post author: Gondolinian 31 May 2015 02:12AM

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Comment author: Lumifer 18 June 2015 03:16:35PM 6 points [-]

While I’m impressed by an explanation that’s as flexible as a circus contortionist, I’d prefer something that isn’t consistent with any possible state of the universe. I’m no Popperian, but I like my theories to be at least a little bit falsifiable.

Scott Sumner

Comment author: 27chaos 18 June 2015 06:02:12PM 0 points [-]

I have a hard time telling theories which are bad ones due to inappropriately flexibility apart from theories which are good ones but work in conditions with incomplete data or necessarily limited assumptions etc. Are there any good formalized notions of flexibility that do work distinguishing these?

Comment author: Lumifer 18 June 2015 06:11:09PM 2 points [-]

There are formalized notions of flexibility for models which generally use concepts like "degrees of freedom". However they are limited in that they don't take account of the "hidden flexibility" stemming from things like the garden of the forking paths or the filedrawer bias.

Theories have additional issues -- like not being sufficiently well formalized.

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