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TheAltar comments on How to provide a simple example to the requirement of falsifiability in the scientific method to a novice audience? - Less Wrong Discussion
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Comments (57)
I came here to mention raindances. You do a raindance and nothing happens. You raindance for 12 more days and suddenly it rains. That must mean if you dance for 13 days straight (or dance until some other sort of requirement you Just So on the spot) it will rain!
If you don't add the idea of falsifiability to accept that raindances might not cause rain when you get negative results, then you will always get the conclusion that some amount of raindancing will cause rain.
Ideally you would add a parameter of audience interaction though if you really want everyone to feel the impact of their failed predictions on a gut level. That's the value of the 2-4-6 game and things like making predictions before learning about scope insensitivity.
raindance is good for that reason (it has a lot of freedom). You can do statistics on it; you can also (sneakily) keep experimenting for a very long time scale and only stop when you have the right answer.
you can also do things like - dance on days when the weather man says it will rain. just to confuse people
My motorcycle once broke down. Messing about with all the usual stuff didn't restart it. Eventually I danced backwards round it waving a spanner and singing about petrol. Started first kick.