Randolf comments on No Logical Positivist I - Less Wrong

17 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 04 August 2008 01:06AM

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Comment author: Randolf 12 November 2011 12:49:20PM *  1 point [-]

This is another sort of mistake. Because a hypothesis can't be tested by me does not mean that it is meaningless. Vereficationists would agree with this because they think verification works everywhere, even on the other side of the universe. If some alien race over there could have seen the spaceship, or seen something which made the probability of there being a spaceship there high, or not have, then the claim is not meaningless.

I don't think I understand.. If it isn't possible to ever verify the existence of these aliens, what does it matter that they could have seen the spaceship? Essentially, how does it help that some being A could verify a phenomenon if I can't ever verify that this is indeed the case?

Comment author: potato 12 November 2011 07:10:49PM *  0 points [-]

It doesn't help you at all. It just means that verificationsts would and should not call it meaningless. It is unverifiable for you but not for science as a whole.