Does science need to be proven?

[todofwar]

12 hours ago, PB666 said:

Snip

Science can sometimes be defined as the misunderstanding of statistics unfortunately. In the end basic research is funded by getting results that are definite, even when claiming a definite result is not always appropriate. People chase the all important p value and publish once they get below a certain threshold, but aside from the fact that this is not what p values are really meant for you can always adjust your criteria for throwing out data points until your p value is low enough. It gets worse as you go from scientific journals to pop sci, a paper showing a correlation between a certain gene and a certain phenotype becomes x gene causes y effect, when no such causal relationship really exists.

But all this still involves falsifiable hypotheses, so it remains scientifically valid and the next scientist can come along and get credit for disproving a theory with a better p value (or slightly worse p value, doesn't seem to matter to the all important journal editors/grant reviewers).

[Bill Phil]

7 hours ago, mikegarrison said:

No, you clearly fail to understand Russell's Tea Pot. It does not mean there is a tea pot in space. It does mean that there *could be* a tea pot in space. If there is, it will entirely blow up most of our established understanding of entropy (and therefore science). But until (unless) it is found, we continue on thinking that tea pots can not spontaneously pop into space.

You can not prove there is no Tea Pot. But that doesn't mean there is one. In fact, it means almost the opposite. It means that the theory that there is a Tea Pot is not a valid scientific theory.

No. I understand it well. You said that if something can't be disproven then it's accepted by the scientific community. I was bringing up an example to disprove that statement.

[Tex_NL]

Science does not necessarily need to be proven, it can also be dis-proven. What is of paramount importance in science is that it is repeatable.

And Russels teapot might not be a valid scientific theory. It is definitely a valid philosophical one. You could even call it theological. Both view points are true until you can proof one or the other.
On the other hand, 'Schrödinger's cat' is considered a valid theory. And this too is based on the uncertainty between two states.

[PB666]

2 hours ago, todofwar said:

Science can sometimes be defined as the misunderstanding of statistics unfortunately. In the end basic research is funded by getting results that are definite, even when claiming a definite result is not always appropriate. People chase the all important p value and publish once they get below a certain threshold, but aside from the fact that this is not what p values are really meant for you can always adjust your criteria for throwing out data points until your p value is low enough. It gets worse as you go from scientific journals to pop sci, a paper showing a correlation between a certain gene and a certain phenotype becomes x gene causes y effect, when no such causal relationship really exists.

But all this still involves falsifiable hypotheses, so it remains scientifically valid and the next scientist can come along and get credit for disproving a theory with a better p value (or slightly worse p value, doesn't seem to matter to the all important journal editors/grant reviewers).

A falsifiable hypothesis is a contradiction is your statistical methods are in-determinant. You can get published and funded if you results are in-determinant. For example on-label drug use that fortuitously results in 1 positive result in co-occurring disease can result in funding by a drug company in off-label drug use for treating the second condition that might result in phase trial studies. A single positive or negative result has no statistical value, its an anecdote. It might not result in you getting funded, unless you can collaborate with someone who is a specialist in the second field. This is happening all the time now with biologics, often clinicians do not start with a hypothesis on what the drug may be good at treating, they  just stumble over a finding, like gee wow how come this arthritis drug suddenly treated your psoriasis. 

Science is a messy business. We often thing of scientist at blackboards writing out complex equations, lol, reality is they are often opportunist.

 

1 hour ago, Bill Phil said:

No. I understand it well. You said that if something can't be disproven then it's accepted by the scientific community. I was bringing up an example to disprove that statement.

To produce a complex structure you can start with the random probability that the particles needed to form it can appear in position, to double the number of particles, the probability falls to very low values, to double that one more step reaches so close to zero, in the history of the universe it will never happen. Its impossible. 

Impossible things can happen, but only if random events build serially, that is you have one rare thing happens then another, followed by a selective process, then another, etc.

 

[wumpus]

1 hour ago, Tex_NL said:

Science does not necessarily need to be proven, it can also be dis-proven. What is of paramount importance in science is that it is repeatable.

And Russels teapot might not be a valid scientific theory. It is definitely a valid philosophical one. You could even call it theological. Both view points are true until you can proof one or the other.
On the other hand, 'Schrödinger's cat' is considered a valid theory. And this too is based on the uncertainty between two states.

The point about Russel's teapot is that while it satisfies all available data and does indeed make a prediction ("there's a teapot out there if you can find it").  The two reasons it doesn't count are:

It isn't falsifieable:  it is not possible to completely survey the universe and declare the teapot non-existent.

It fails Occam's Razor.  The probability of adding a teapot should always be less than a teapot.  Russel's point was likely more theological than scientific.  Claiming the nonexistence of the teapot (and further generalization) is scientifically trivial.  Avoiding generalization issues theologically is more difficult.

Schrödinger's cat is a more interesting story.  The way I learned it, Schrödinger posited his cat in an effort to "fix" quantum mechanics (presumably on the side of the EPR article).  Quantum mechanics was working absolutely fine until you were required to make a prediction on the state of an unobserved system.  Unfortunately, both A and ~A (live cat and dead cat) were equally valid answers for certain (carefully contrived) systems.  Schrödinger effectively wanted his cat dead or alive.

If that were the end of it, I'd have to assume that science would simply expect the cat to be dead or alive.  However, any other time quantum mechanics (or later quantum refinements) would make predictions of unobserved states it would show that they made more sense to be understood as a superposition of states ordinarily thought of as separate.  The famous example is the 2 slit electron experiment, where unobserved electrons appear to travel through multiple paths simultaneously (i.e. act as waves).  The ability to predict all observed data is sufficiently strong to accept otherwise absurd (but strictly following the known good equations and not adding more due to Occam's Razor) answers for the unobserved states.

* snide comment: Someone recently managed to get a water molecule trapped inside a buckyball.  Any discussion of Russel's Teapot now has to include the disclaimer "of sufficient size for tea for [at least] two, a flat surface for contact with a stove, and a spout to pour the tea".  It would be quite easy to believe the random formation of a buckyball trapping a water molecule existing somewhere out there.

[Kertech]

observation -> theory to explain with predictions -> do theories predictions -> more observations (repeat) 

At every step people should be looking for flaws

The only facts in science are your observations

[Bill Phil]

5 hours ago, Tex_NL said:

Science does not necessarily need to be proven, it can also be dis-proven. What is of paramount importance in science is that it is repeatable.

And Russels teapot might not be a valid scientific theory. It is definitely a valid philosophical one. You could even call it theological. Both view points are true until you can proof one or the other.
On the other hand, 'Schrödinger's cat' is considered a valid theory. And this too is based on the uncertainty between two states.

Schrödinger's cat was a thought exercise, not a theory.

[PB666]

4 hours ago, wumpus said:

The point about Russel's teapot is that while it satisfies all available data and does indeed make a prediction ("there's a teapot out there if you can find it").  The two reasons it doesn't count are:

It isn't falsifieable:  it is not possible to completely survey the universe and declare the teapot non-existent.

It fails Occam's Razor.  The probability of adding a teapot should always be less than a teapot.  Russel's point was likely more theological than scientific.  Claiming the nonexistence of the teapot (and further generalization) is scientifically trivial.  Avoiding generalization issues theologically is more difficult.

Schrödinger's cat is a more interesting story.  The way I learned it, Schrödinger posited his cat in an effort to "fix" quantum mechanics (presumably on the side of the EPR article).  Quantum mechanics was working absolutely fine until you were required to make a prediction on the state of an unobserved system.  Unfortunately, both A and ~A (live cat and dead cat) were equally valid answers for certain (carefully contrived) systems.  Schrödinger effectively wanted his cat dead or alive.

If that were the end of it, I'd have to assume that science would simply expect the cat to be dead or alive.  However, any other time quantum mechanics (or later quantum refinements) would make predictions of unobserved states it would show that they made more sense to be understood as a superposition of states ordinarily thought of as separate.  The famous example is the 2 slit electron experiment, where unobserved electrons appear to travel through multiple paths simultaneously (i.e. act as waves).  The ability to predict all observed data is sufficiently strong to accept otherwise absurd (but strictly following the known good equations and not adding more due to Occam's Razor) answers for the unobserved states.

* snide comment: Someone recently managed to get a water molecule trapped inside a buckyball.  Any discussion of Russel's Teapot now has to include the disclaimer "of sufficient size for tea for [at least] two, a flat surface for contact with a stove, and a spout to pour the tea".  It would be quite easy to believe the random formation of a buckyball trapping a water molecule existing somewhere out there.

A teapot is one of many manmade or manmade-like items, there are 10s of millions. If there were millions of possible items orbiting the sun one of any type, certainly we would find 1, we haven't found any, therefore teapot does should not exist. In addition, for nature to randomly make a teapot is impossible, see my previous response, so the teapot would need to be manmade or alien made, but we haven't observed any aliens neither collecting tea on earth or making tea in space. Therefore there is unlikely to be a manmade item in space unless man puts one there. You could argue that gee maybe we couldn't see a teapot, another manmade object is a supertanker, atomic bombs, the empire-state buidling, the great-wall of china, US Interstate 10.

I want to point out that the Teapot example really steps the line of religious argumentation. Let me point out why.

OK, so I have to lay out the disclaimer here to shield myself from moderation. If we go back to how western science evolved, it evolved from theology within the HRC, and later the anglican and other protestant religions. This has to be stated because it is an important reminder that some feel the need to reinforce that separation (Russell) and others do not (Einstein). The teapot argument is use to refute 'he/she/it exists' logic as applied to non-observable beings. This separates empericism from faith. We can however find consistencies with faith, most of which can be explained by coincidence.  Occams razor was not to refute religion, but refute convoluted claims that tried to prove an 'it exists' argument. Occam was a theologian, lets not forget, and I think his point was to modulate religious sophistry of his time which he believes interfere with spirituality, for this he was ex-communicated. But to say properly his line of thought was equally important to theological reformation as it was for science. As such he was postumately reinstated into the church.

Quote

William of Ockham believed "only faith gives us access to theological truths. - wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_of_Ockham#Faith_and_reason

This is one of many hinge-points in science, because it means empiricisms and theory based on empirical observations can be, if desired, cleanly separated from theology but that was not its intent. By the way, its not the first time this was stated, the largely ignored rebuke at the end of Job (chapters 37-38, somewhere between 1500 and 2500 BC, a cannanite story) basically says the same, not every act of nature is attributable to your favorite deity (blame the lawyers instead, lol)[Pointing out that from a scholarly point of view, the portrait of el and satan (the inquisitor) in Job are not the classical views, this book was likely adopted from non-hebraic probably early Aramaic oral traditions, what today would be extinct believes more akin to the polytheistic systems that once existed on the Euphrates] Keeping this in the realm of astronomy . . . . .

Quote

You [Job] cannot tie together the beautiful Pleiades. And you cannot change the shape of Orion.
You cannot put the stars in the right place at different times of the year. And you cannot tell the Great Bear and Little Bear where they should go in the sky.
You do not know how everything in the sky stays in the right place. And you do not understand, either, how I rule the earth. - "el"   Chapter 38:31-33 Job - EasyEnglishBible

many acts of nature or demon would be 'lets'(which are natural and which are divine actions only your deity would know and are not to be guessed at lightly). Again the intent of the narrative is not to separate the events of the natural world from that of operated on by the deity, but to separate the mortal from postulating divine intervention at every turn. Clearly there was a recognition, just as Russell recognizing, that the events, people were attributing to their deity, from time to time, went too far. Socrates had a similar critique, but you can find critiques of attribution in almost all religions including Christianity, its just that Job does this with such verbosity and repetition. Enough with the origin of the argument, hopefully I have kept this in the realm of science history.

Westerners can largely attribute growth of science to the Renaissance, however its other faults. Ideas that create the notion of proof however create the most important point of the period scientific reformation, that no assumption of divine meddling can necessarily be made on any natural observation. The timing of Ockham (around 1325) is that this occurs very close to the beginning of the Renaissance. Many of the ideas that characterized the Renaissance bore out of 13th and 14th century theologians. The important thing we should see about about both is that is does not divide science from faith, it retracts faith by condensation. The concept of a Devil's advocate for miracles is exemplary of this. If the objects of potential natural interference is shrinking, then its easier to expand science, and subsequently you have Galileo, Copernicus, Brahe, Columbus, Newton . . . . all now have room to explore without stepping on theology, although, in fact, they did anyway. And just to point out, given dark matter, we still don't know how the constellations are tied together, but we are getting there, at the time before Kepler, there was no way to know, and in misunderstanding our ancestors falsely attributed, rather than saying 'we don't know;'. Which is a major point for me, because I have written papers with rather bizarre observations, which I could have hypothesized an explanation, but simply did not. A sample of one observation, event if composed of alot of data does not suffice to create a theory. In science we have the meta-analysis, if many researchers observe a similar thing, then you can stick your neck out. 

I feel the need to point this out because Bertrand is taking the opposite point of view, he is trying to expand the realm scientific purism away by eliminating the realm of faith. IOW if you are a scientific purist, then you cannot explain anything in the observable world using faith. God does not play dice with the Universe is a non-scientific argument. Based upon Russells atheistic views, right or wrong, that's what it is. Occam is not trying to dictate to science how it should be, he is trying to dictate to faith how it shouldn't be. Occam and Job's narrator have an easier task, because faith exists but the potential object/action of faith may not, its alot easier to condense spurious arguments where the confidence range is very close to zero, it is not so easy, even in science to condense the mean and confidence range to zero for any argument (Russells belief in deity). Teapot in space is as equally likely as deity creating the universe, for example.

OK, why am I making the point, there are many many things in science that we are neither attributing to deities but also not completely falsifiable, at least in the immediate context, the discovery of the reverse proton pump in mitochondrial ATP generation is one of them, the earliest versions of quantum theory, as statisticians we publish that which may be wrong, that is the very nature of alpha.  Russell's view is not applicable to science, sorry to say that, it applies to heavily distilled knowledge, science is a process not an object. In the process we may produce knowledge, but in many cases its hard to know for absolute certainty that knowledge is perfect. If we make a purist view, then science goes too far. In saying this it is clearly not the responsibility of science to attempt to prove or disprove the existence of deity. That is the point.

I have been asked in the past do you believe in evolution, yes, evolution is quite obvious, but I do not know with any certainty how life began on earth. Since life got here it has evolved, to say anymore would be making an argument based on faith, in this case a belief that evolved from 13th century christian reformation using a doctrine known as the scientific method a caveot of which is that for everything there is causilty, and that is very convenient until you look at the quantum mechanics. Every coin has two sides.

Edited May 5, 2016 by PB666

[RocketSquid]

There's no way to "prove" anything meaningful. You can disprove anything, but prove nothing. If your statement is a generalization, then it can be disproven with a counterexample. If you can find no counterexamples, but haven't actively experimented, just observed, then your statement is a law. If, after years of testing by many people, no counterexamples have arisen, it is safe to declare it a theory. But, if over any of this, a counterexample arises and it isn't a mistake, you must revise your statement or it is FALSE.

On the other hand, as with the teapot, just because a statement is impossible to disprove does not mean it is true. If there is no way to disprove it because it cannot be tested, it is somewhere in the spectrum between "philosophy" and "stupidity".

[todofwar]

49 minutes ago, RocketSquid said:

There's no way to "prove" anything meaningful. You can disprove anything, but prove nothing. If your statement is a generalization, then it can be disproven with a counterexample. If you can find no counterexamples, but haven't actively experimented, just observed, then your statement is a law. If, after years of testing by many people, no counterexamples have arisen, it is safe to declare it a theory. But, if over any of this, a counterexample arises and it isn't a mistake, you must revise your statement or it is FALSE.

On the other hand, as with the teapot, just because a statement is impossible to disprove does not mean it is true. If there is no way to disprove it because it cannot be tested, it is somewhere in the spectrum between "philosophy" and "stupidity".

I think this thread has strayed a bit from the original intent. I should have said, does science need to be falsifiable? Proof is a weird concept, I think Descartes did a pretty good job showing that proof is not always attainable. But in the end, for something to be science and not philosophy it needs some kind of concrete statement about the universe that can be proven wrong. 

[RocketSquid]

48 minutes ago, todofwar said:

I think this thread has strayed a bit from the original intent. I should have said, does science need to be falsifiable? Proof is a weird concept, I think Descartes did a pretty good job showing that proof is not always attainable. But in the end, for something to be science and not philosophy it needs some kind of concrete statement about the universe that can be proven wrong. 

That is pretty much what I said. You can't prove anything, but if a statement is literally impossible to disprove, it is next to meaningless.

[mikegarrison]

11 hours ago, Bill Phil said:

No. I understand it well. You said that if something can't be disproven then it's accepted by the scientific community. I was bringing up an example to disprove that statement.

That is not what I said, and i would prefer you not misquote me.

[Bill Phil]

1 minute ago, mikegarrison said:

That is not what I said, and i would prefer you not misquote me.

Please take a look at what you said. It implies that anything that cannot be disproven is tentatively accepted.

[mikegarrison]

On 5/4/2016 at 3:40 PM, mikegarrison said:

Well math isn't science, so what's the problem?

I will note, however, that science is never "proven". Theories are tentatively accepted if attempts to disprove them fail. But failure to disprove something is not the same thing as proving it.

This is exactly what I said.

Theories are tentatively accepted if attempts to disprove them fail.

Russell was not making a theory. He knew it was not a theory precisely because it was unfalsifiable.

[PB666]

7 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

Theories are tentatively accepted if attempts to disprove them fail.

Theories can be tentatively accepted if attempts to prove the alternatives fail, also, and under other circumstances. Theories should have some support. I don't like theories in general. For example Theory of Evolution, but I don't see one evolution I see many. There was a theory that mutation cannot anticipate evolution (this is like the non-communication flaw in quantum entanglement), but in fact we found out studying the gender biased passage of myotonic dystrophy gene that by knowing  gender we could anticipate future mutations.

You can look at this way, the theory is incomplete or that optimistically the exceptions define the rule, what I see is that if there is one exception, then there are likely many. We have a problem with both theories and scientific dogma, at times in the past both have been proven wrong. So it best not to put too much faith in theories, faith is not our realm

7 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

Russell was not making a theory. He knew it was not a theory precisely because it was unfalsifiable.

No but he was trying to put-forward a religious-like philosophical base.

Whoever drafted Russel's teapot here did not do so in proper context.  Science did not adopt Bertrand, Russell usurped science to push the concept of logical positivism. You can't push scientist philosophically, religious devotees of different faiths can work elbow to elbow at the same lab bench, they don't give a flip about each others philosophy, they are driven by an unhealthy obsession to learn and discover. When they discover something then they want to defend, or be the first one to find a better answer. Russell was advancing something in the theological sphere of philosophy, yeah sure you will find scientist that agree with his point of view, I'm not one of them, but then I don't make science work, I'm simply an ant in the collective ant-mound called science following my own directives. So here is what I can give you from a philosophical point of view.

Quote

By the late 1960s, logical positivism had clearly run its course.^[41] Interviewed in the late 1970s, A J Ayer supposed that "the most important" defect "was that nearly all of it was false".^[42][43] Although logical positivism tends to be recalled as a pillar of scientism,^[44]Carl Hempel was key in establishing the philosophy subdiscipline philosophy of science^[13] where Thomas Kuhn and Karl Popper brought in the era postpositivism.^[39]John Passmore found logical positivism to be "dead, or as dead as a philosophical movement ever becomes".^{[42] -}   - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_positivism

The first time I ran into was about a almost two decades ago in a archeology forum, wherein one the posters, rather daffy person, was espousing this philosophy of science. It caught me by surprise because I had never heard of such a thing. The concept is full of good ideas, but that is all it is and no more, it has no basic structure, any attempt to unify a thought in science is broadly resisted, fundamentally scientist know their process is messy, your typical thesis program all but beats that into your head.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demarcation_problem

So if Russell is obsolete what is current?

Quote

Postpositivists believe that human knowledge is based not on unchallengeable, rock-solid foundations, but rather upon human conjectures. As human knowledge is thus unavoidably conjectural, the assertion of these conjectures are warranted, or more specifically, justified by a set of warrants, which can be modified or withdrawn in the light of further investigation. However, postpositivism is not a form of relativism, and generally retains the idea of objective truth.

This may have been acceptable 20 or 30 years ago. If you want to get a grip on what science is now, really, go talk to the scientist who does the statistics for LHC experiments looking for new particles. The philosophical basis you want for truth is pretty much going to be epitomized by that process. And if you are thinking that it sounds very technocratic and not very philosophical, then you understand.

 

[lajoswinkler]

Scientific theories are things that already have proof (and a model, etc.).

That is, stuff like string theory isn't really a scientific theory. It's a mathematical theory. Mathematics is not science.

 

I'd rather call it string hypothesis.

[PB666]

On May 4, 2016 at 0:37 PM, sevenperforce said:

I don't think anyone suggested that the requirement of falsifiability is a scientific criterion of scientificity...or, if they did, they shouldn't have because they would be wrong. 

Mathematical axioms are falsifiable but ideas which are true by definition need not be falsifiable.

Not necessarily. Consider two simulated universes with identical physical laws, one of which is programmed to discourage scientific inquiry and one which is not. The former universe will see the "science is useful" hypothesis falsified, but the definition of science will not be in any way changed. 

Another example would be a universe with extremely complicated laws which came with a Truth Book providing freely accessible answers for all basic questions. Here, again, the definition of science would be the same but the usefulness hypothesis would be false; thus the usefulness hypothesis is falsifiable.

More broadly, the hypothesis of the usefulness of science is falsifiable because if the hypothesis were not true, science would not work nearly so well as it does. 

O lets say there is a truth book, but it only gave the most fundemetal answers, for example lets say it had an equation for predicting where virtual particles appearred and disappeared with a t0 from the moment of the big bang and a d parameter, how far the local space had travel creating the local comoving space velocity term and relativistic correction and intercorellation term that we have yet to discover that perfectly meshes quantum observation with relativisty. This is all hypothetical, its just a construct to demenstate a level of understanding more advanced than our own.

This would make no sense at all to the first reader that opened. after living his whole life oblivious to the creation of the universe content innthe understanding of his world he would ask where the explicative am i, why the heck do i care to know where virtual particles appear. 

We really don't want the ultimate answer so much as we want to discover it, in the meantime its 42.

[YNM]

Slightly off-topic : I just realized that theories can also be proven / disproven by finding something that counter your claims. Like say, when they saw the stars were displaced during an eclipse near the Sun, it shows that Newton's view of gravity is wrong while GR is right. Still, have we searched for evidence where GR is wrong ? Quantum theory ? String "theory" ? I know both ways (try to see where it matches or diverges) would result in a proof, but it kind of irks me that so far, we've only searched for the ones that matches the theory.

(Of not lesser importance though, both requires observational data. That's why I always support more observation and experiment.)

[pincushionman]

43 minutes ago, YNM said:

Slightly off-topic : I just realized that theories can also be proven / disproven by finding something that counter your claims…Still, have we searched for evidence where GR is wrong ? Quantum theory ? String "theory" ?…

Not off-topic at all. When you design an experiment, you need to prepare for both confirming and disproving results. But it's awful hard to design an experiment to expressly disprove an a theory without a competing theory that makes a different prediction - there's no indication that a particular result should be different. Remember how I said if the predictions are the same the theories aren't different?

GR experiment results don't really say "GR is proved right" so much as "GR is better than Newtonian by this much."

Thing is, there already are experiments that disprove GR. It's just that they're all on the quantum scale, and GR fails them badly. So everyone knows GR is incomplete because of that. We just don't have any theories that can reconcile that and are predictive.

[PB666]

1 hour ago, pincushionman said:

Not off-topic at all. When you design an experiment, you need to prepare for both confirming and disproving results. But it's awful hard to design an experiment to expressly disprove an a theory without a competing theory that makes a different prediction - there's no indication that a particular result should be different. Remember how I said if the predictions are the same the theories aren't different?

GR experiment results don't really say "GR is proved right" so much as "GR is better than Newtonian by this much."

Thing is, there already are experiments that disprove GR. It's just that they're all on the quantum scale, and GR fails them badly. So everyone knows GR is incomplete because of that. We just don't have any theories that can reconcile that and are predictive.

They are still testing GR, at least on visible scales its always correct. Its at the level of being always consistent. I don't know if GR is esoteric knowledge or not, someone has to figure out a way to bridge the divide between quantum mechanics. The nature of quantum gravity is at the core of the problem.

[wumpus]

On 5/4/2016 at 1:01 PM, sevenperforce said:

Your first declaration that a dropped apple will either fall or not fall is not falsifiable and thus cannot be the basis of a scientific theory, but it is logically valid and true by definition. [snip]

There is a reason things that are "logically valid and true by definition" can't be the basis of science.  Erwin Schrödinger pointed out that a cat in a closed box in danger of death if and only if a quantum state was detected in a certain way could not be claimed to be either dead or alive.  Obviously, he could set the box to either drop an apple or not, at which point saying "a dropped apple will either fall or not fall" (presumably this would require a rare combination of quantum uncertainty, chaos amplifiying the effects and a re-entry conditions defining "falling", but it is certainly conceivable).  Science depends on observation of the predictions of theories and considers such preconceived ideas of truth to be a source of error.  Such things might have a basis of philosophy (although the only philosophy grad student I know has a strong background in neuroscience (required by the department as far as I can tell) and the field is more rigorous and scientifically grounded than I thought) or did in roughly Greek times, but science has moved on.

On 5/4/2016 at 1:37 PM, sevenperforce said:

I don't think anyone suggested that the requirement of falsifiability is a scientific criterion of scientificity...or, if they did, they shouldn't have because they would be wrong. 

Mathematical axioms are falsifiable but ideas which are true by definition need not be falsifiable.

I don't think we are all agreeing on what "falsifiablity" means.  My understanding is that there are two ways to go about falsifying things.  One is to find a counter-proof.  The other is to assume its negation and show find a contradiction with some other proven truth.  Without this you would have equal evidence of the negation of your "true by definition" ideas and might as well call them "false by definition" (see above for a "true by definition" shown to be false).

2 hours ago, PB666 said:

They are still testing GR, at least on visible scales its always correct. Its at the level of being always consistent. I don't know if GR is esoteric knowledge or not, someone has to figure out a way to bridge the divide between quantum mechanics. The nature of quantum gravity is at the core of the problem.

I'm not sure about this either.  I've certainly read claims about them disagreeing and to accept the quantum side (at quantum sizes).  This is odd since I'm also aware of a  complete failure to use quantum effects to send a signals faster than light (which is typically not part of quantum theory).  Do the issues occur close to massive particles not properly bending space?

Edited May 6, 2016 by wumpus

[PB666]

21 minutes ago, wumpus said:

There is a reason things that are "logically valid and true by definition" can't be the basis of science.  Erwin Schrödinger pointed out that a cat in a closed box in danger of death if and only if a quantum state was detected in a certain way could not be claimed to be either dead or alive.  Obviously, he could set the box to either drop an apple or not, at which point saying "a dropped apple will either fall or not fall" (presumably this would require a rare combination of quantum uncertainty, chaos amplifiying the effects and a re-entry conditions defining "falling", but it is certainly conceivable).  Science depends on observation of the predictions of theories and considers such preconceived ideas of truth to be a source of error.  Such things might have a basis of philosophy (although the only philosophy grad student I know has a strong background in neuroscience (required by the department as far as I can tell) and the field is more rigorous and scientifically grounded than I thought) or did in roughly Greek times, but science has moved on.

I don't think we are all agreeing on what "falsifiablity" means.  My understanding is that there are two ways to go about falsifying things.  One is to find a counter-proof.  The other is to assume its negation and show find a contradiction with some other proven truth.  Without this you would have equal evidence of the negation of your "true by definition" ideas and might as well call them "false by definition" (see above for a "true by definition" shown to be false).

This problem is hideous because it actually test the difference between Newtonian and Relativistic perspective.

So lets do the newtonian experiment in 2016. Pretend we did not know anything but statistics.

We place a table about the same height of the apple on a tree, we then observe the motion of apples on the table. We record their motion over say 2 seconds. We find that in 2 seconds the apples are observed to move 0.000 meters +/- 0.0001 meters. The null hypothesis is then that apples do not move, you then cause the table to disappear and measure the position of the apples after half second, one second, two seconds, At each time stamp the apples have significantly moved using something like T-test there is a signficant motion. YOu could then perform the next test, you could take a hollowed out apple and compare its motion to a regular apple and look at the difference, you might need 1000 apples but eventually you would see a significant difference. The 16th century hypothesis is that the table in non-inertial and the apples are forcing themselves to the earth. In both cases the null hypothesis is proven false, we reject it and we claim there is a mystical force acting to accelerate the apples. We then reject the hypothesis that there is no force acting on the apple, and we reject the notion that aether and apple have the same acceleration, since if we remove apple from inside the apple and allow the aether to flow in, the apple slows down. We did not examine the lead ball because we had no expectation of what the non-inertial reference frame should be.

Next we move to  having learned general relativity blind of Newtonian gravity.

The same experiment our null hypothesis is that the apples travel to the ground, we detect the motion after 1 minute, we observe what we expected but a slight deviation due to drag, we replaced the apples with lead balls the same size, we observe no deviation from expectation, and we hollow out the apples and we observe slightly more deviation. We thus conclude that an aether between the ground and trees is applying a force to the apple in its non-inertial reference frame. We reject the null hypothesis that there is no aether, and accept the alternative, that there is an aether outside the apple that is apply a force to the apple as it travels. We then place the apples on the table and note that the table is accelerating the apple at 9.8 m/s and we conclude that the ground is accelerating the table, and some earthen media on the ground is accelerating all of this. We reject the null hypothesis that the table is not weaker than eather, and we accept the hypothesis that the table is much stronger than the aether, all further test of media will entail single tailed comparisions.

Does it not seem odd that we did not do the Newtonian experiment first and estimate gravity, how did we get the Einstein field equation if we had not estimated G or earths mu first?

Note that the approach of science changes over time, that is because its a process.

44 minutes ago, wumpus said:

There is a reason things that are "logically valid and true by definition" can't be the basis of science.  Erwin Schrödinger pointed out that a cat in a closed box in danger of death if and only if a quantum state was detected in a certain way could not be claimed to be either dead or alive.  Obviously, he could set the box to either drop an apple or not, at which point saying "a dropped apple will either fall or not fall" (presumably this would require a rare combination of quantum uncertainty, chaos amplifiying the effects and a re-entry conditions defining "falling", but it is certainly conceivable).  Science depends on observation of the predictions of theories and considers such preconceived ideas of truth to be a source of error.  Such things might have a basis of philosophy (although the only philosophy grad student I know has a strong background in neuroscience (required by the department as far as I can tell) and the field is more rigorous and scientifically grounded than I thought) or did in roughly Greek times, but science has moved on.

I don't think we are all agreeing on what "falsifiablity" means.  My understanding is that there are two ways to go about falsifying things.  One is to find a counter-proof.  The other is to assume its negation and show find a contradiction with some other proven truth.  Without this you would have equal evidence of the negation of your "true by definition" ideas and might as well call them "false by definition" (see above for a "true by definition" shown to be false).

I'm not sure about this either.  I've certainly read claims about them disagreeing and to accept the quantum side (at quantum sizes).  This is odd since I'm also aware of a  complete failure to use quantum effects to send a signals faster than light (which is typically not part of quantum theory).  Do the issues occur close to massive particles not properly bending space?

Thats a question, gravitons are supposed to be scalable, but I have no idea whether they are recieved as single units transmitted via quantum entanglement or that the wave is composed of many particles in some kind of distribution. The facts are pretty basic, no-one knows.

 

[PB666]

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/failure-is-moving-science-forward/?ex_cid=538fb

[sevenperforce]

On 5/6/2016 at 11:58 AM, wumpus said:

I don't think we are all agreeing on what "falsifiablity" means.  My understanding is that there are two ways to go about falsifying things.  One is to find a counter-proof.  The other is to assume its negation and show find a contradiction with some other proven truth.  Without this you would have equal evidence of the negation of your "true by definition" ideas and might as well call them "false by definition" (see above for a "true by definition" shown to be false).

You seem to be defining "falsification" but that is not the same thing as "falsifiability".

If someone broaches a theory which they claim is scientific, and I ask, "Is it falsifiable?" then what I'm wanting to hear is a specific prediction which, if shown to be false, would disprove their theory. If the theory is good and they're relatively clever, they should be able to come up with a suitable prediction. This ought to be something specific to their theory which I can go out and physically test.

An obvious case would be Newton's law of universal gravitation. I ask Newton, "Is it falsifiable?" "Sure," answers Ike. "Find a massive body which exerteth not force in proportion to its mass, and my theory shall be disproven."

So if someone claims that Intelligent Design is a valid scientific theory, I'll want to see them make a similar prediction. E.g., "Yeah, if intelligent design is true, you won't be able to find a genetic sequence with this particular set of attributes; if you find a genetic sequence with those attributes, then intelligent design is false."

[PB666]

Quote

Scientific method is absolutely not limited with the physical laws of our real world, it's an abstract logical construction applicable to any structurized information.

In early XIX there was no idea about quantum mechanics. But the science was. If they weren't discovereed quantum mechanics or if t were erroneus idea, nothing would happen with the science itself, just only theory less.

I refer you back posts in two other threads. The point I was trying to make was that because of bias, a fraud was allowed to perpetuate for 41 years, a fraud that tainted the veiws of 'scientist' not only for the 41 years, but for decades after the fraud was uncovered they continued to hold onto their extreme 'tainted' belief. Objective molecular genetics revealed that transgenic similarities between Neandertals and humans were largely small and focused in 'invisible' physiology, and yet up to the Year 1998 the claim was made that 75% of human genes flowed locally from the Neanderthal population. There was no evidence, not a drop of obvious morphological evidence that humans evolved locally out of Africa as'neanderthals'. It later turned out there was a small contribution, but this was not what their evidence was based up. (IOW they were partially right but for the wrong reason)

In the same way some current belief, probably a minor or unpopular belief in QM at some future point will be shown to be a correct representation. If you come up with enough beliefs randomly, eventually one will proven to be 'true'.
 

Quote

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/the-philosophy-of-guessing-has-harmed-physics-expert-says/  John Horgan on August 21, 2014 

Here is an example: theoretical physics has not done great in the last decades. Why? Well, one of the reasons, I think, is that it got trapped in a wrong philosophy: the idea that you can make progress by guessing new theory and disregarding the qualitative content of previous theories. This is the physics of the "why not?" Why not studying this theory, or the other? Why not another dimension, another field, another universe? Science has never advanced in this manner in the past. Science does not advance by guessing. - Carlo Rovelli.

  Science is not immune from the failings of the human ego, pride and prejudice. Without any substantiating or background data of 'real' nature science can hold onto beliefs for more than a century. I have seen it said by physicist that there is a possibility that 'a chair' can appear at the event horizon of a black hole . . . . .other such nonsense recently. More or less if you by that you can buy the infinite improbability drive (HHGTTG) propulsion system.

Ultimately all chemical drive systems are limited by the maximum amount of energy that can be stored between two bonds, this is a maximum exhaust velocity of 4800 m/s/  One of the issues that we battle in this group is the equation for non-chemical drive systems. 

Thrust = 2 * efficiency * power/V_exhaust

Just about everytime this is presented there is some effort, wiggling, to suggest there are occasions that this is not true. We have had huge battles with this purest form of this regarding the Cannae drive. But the Cannae drive sets the outer limit on the arguement. Despite the Cannae drive having 10 times the thrust that it should (according to our understanding of physics) in reality it is at the very low end of power efficiency, the only drive that is lower in power efficiency is the photon drive. Something like 350MW/N (Photon) versus 35MW/N (Cannae).

Humans have conquered many aspects of Nature, there is an underlying belief that because we want to travel in space  in the same way we wanted to travel between continents, that a Concorde can go from London to NY in 3 hours what it used to take a Galley ship 2 months to do.  Simply having desires creates a view by the masses that these things they see should be true even when they are not.

True: If you increase the mass efficiency of electric propulsion of you will lose thrust.
True: Wormholes in space might exist, but passing matter through them is impossible.
True: We are all time travelers in other spacetime reference frames, the astronauts on the ISS are time travelers.
False: Quantum mechanics demonstrates _full_ time reversibility. [Time reversibility on the quantum scale is a process in which a particle is induced to traverse in the negative direction a traveled path while it is not being observed. If at any point in the process a particle is observed, then time is not fully reversed.][Also it is not clear time exists at the unit scale of the quantum systems something many physicists argue is observable]
True: All energy warps the fabric of space.
False: Space can be warped for the purpose of generating forward motion at V>C.

This then just about scrapes all Sci-fi drives systems in one swoop, none are better or worse than others, they are all fantasy.
I would include in this discussion just about all of Issac Arthur stuff sci-fi---->fantasy as there are two unproven aspects that almost all of his work is based on.
We may or may not get fusion to produce electric power >> heat, and that we may actually use fusion electric power in space.

The known science that fusion based spaceflight is facing is entropy . . . . we are reasonably good at managing entropy on earth when we have huge heat sinks to dump heat into (although if we look at our total power systems, we are relatively inefficient. Consider the chemical energy/time that goes into a power plant and the power that  reaches your computer screen).  In space we have few really good heat sinks, all the heat sinks in space are passive. Future space travel really gets down to how effective we can be at extracting electric power from heat, dumping as little heat into space as possible.

Entropy is one of those things where we think we manage entropy well in our technological systems, including those used in space, but at close inspection we realize how actually poorly we manage entropy.

As a result we may be left with using thermonuclear devices to propel space craft. In which case I think interstellar travel will be unfeasible.