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The Paradox of Karl Popper

blogs.scientificamerican.com

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Re: The Paradox of Karl Popper

#41

Post by ecocentrik »

jessriedel wrote: post #36
ecocentrik wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> tries his best to portray Popper as a kind of silly person. The author seems to have pulled the bulk of the article from 25 year old notes. He doesn't hide his own youthful naïveté at assuming that a taxi driver would know directions to the home of a philosopher. He also preserves what I'd imagine are embarrassing moments like Popper's reaction to his "big question". What you consider silly, might just be an issue…

> He doesn't hide his own youthful naïveté at assuming that a taxi driver would know directions to the home of a philosopher. Huh? The author specifically asked for directions and was surprised when he was (unjustifiably) assured he wouldn't need them. > I personally think it captures the wit and home life of an energetic 90 year old philosopher... 13415 isn't saying the author succeeds at making Popper look silly. R…

Taking that assurance at face value was naïve. The taxi thing was a motif. He frames the interview with it, telling the taxi that picked him up at the end that a famous philosopher lived there.

> 13415 isn't saying the author succeeds at making Popper look silly. Rather, the author is attempting and failing to do so.

How would you define failure in this scenario?

Re: The Paradox of Karl Popper

#42

Post by rexpop »

trukterious wrote: post #3

Popper sounds like a dude. We shouldn't confuse this apparent irascibility with dogmatism. He was passionate about his ideas: he published them and read criticism of them. He changed his mind about the testability of evolution, and other things. Intellectual humility is not the same quality as personal meekness and geniuses have always had difficult personalities. Philosophers doubly so. How could it be otherwise? Ho…

> geniuses have always had difficult personalities

Not sure that's true.

Re: The Paradox of Karl Popper

#43

Post by raverbashing »

nonbel wrote: post #38
raverbashing wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's a philosophical one. It is potentially 'falsifiable' by criticism, however Agreed. I think the main issue is not with the idea itself of the scientific method, rather than the practical implications and its limitations . - The main idea is a qualitative one. It doesn't consider all the statistical can of worms about reproducibility. - Real world experiments rarely reproduce perfectly/exactly. The more the expe…

Scientists were reproducing each others work before statistics was a thing. Whatever "statistical can of worms" there is regarding it sounds like a problem with the statistics being used rather than science.

> Scientists were reproducing each others work before statistics was a thing

They were also doing that before Popper was a thing.

> Whatever "statistical can of worms" there is regarding it sounds like a problem with the statistics being used rather than science.

Not really. It's easier to prove "Drug X cures dying from disease Y 99% of the time" than "Drug X solves issue Y 30% of the time only in individuals with a certain combination of characteristics".

Re: The Paradox of Karl Popper

#44

Post by bikenaga »

The first chapter "Conjectural Knowledge" of his book "Objective Knowledge" is a discussion of his proposed solution to the problem of induction.

His theories of science (and in particular, of falsification) are explained in his book "Conjectures and Refutations". I read it years ago when I was in grad school.

Popper's writing is clear and jargon-free, so anyone who is interested in his ideas should take a look at some of the original sources.

Finally, "Wittgenstein's Poker" by David Edmonds and John Eidinow takes an argument between Wittgenstein and Popper as a starting point for exploring their lives and work.

Re: The Paradox of Karl Popper

#45

Post by nonbel »

raverbashing wrote: post #43
nonbel wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scientists were reproducing each others work before statistics was a thing. Whatever "statistical can of worms" there is regarding it sounds like a problem with the statistics being used rather than science.

> Scientists were reproducing each others work before statistics was a thing They were also doing that before Popper was a thing. > Whatever "statistical can of worms" there is regarding it sounds like a problem with the statistics being used rather than science. Not really. It's easier to prove "Drug X cures dying from disease Y 99% of the time" than "Drug X solves issue Y 30% of the time only in individuals with a…

> Scientists were reproducing each others work before statistics was a thing

They were also doing that before Popper was a thing.

Yes, but not sure why you are pointing that out.

> Whatever "statistical can of worms" there is regarding it sounds like a problem with the statistics being used rather than science.

Not really. It's easier to prove "Drug X cures dying from disease Y 99% of the time" than "Drug X solves issue Y 30% of the time only in individuals with a certain combination of characteristics".

If you had a complete understanding you would only apply the drug when it would work and have 100% success rate.

Re: The Paradox of Karl Popper

#46

Post by yters »

lisper wrote: post #27
yters wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's just pushing the problem up a level. Adding an explanation is proposing a model for the coin's behavior. Regardless of the model proposed, and whether it is confirmed or refuted, if the coin is fair you learn nothing. On the other hand, if the coin is not fair, Solomonoff induction works.

> if the coin is fair you learn nothing. But that is simply because the theory that a coin is fair cannot be falsified with one data point. (Well, that's actually not quite true. It can't be falsified with a single data point which is "heads" or "tails". It could be falsified if the coin lands and breaks into two pieces revealing some internal mechanism that makes it unfair.) > if the coin is not fair, Solomonoff ind…

The problem is how do you gain these explanations in the first place without appealing to inductivism? The process of examining a thing to propose a theory about its operation seems indistinguishable in my mind from the inductivist approach of deriving general theories from particular observations. Both approaches make the same assumption of a consistent underlying order behind the observations we make.

Re: The Paradox of Karl Popper

#47

Post by yters »

coldtea wrote: post #35
yters wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Induction is the problem, so if falsification does not solve the problem it does not contribute anything.

Induction might be the problem for you (and well, certain philosophers of science, like Bertrand Russell), but it's not the problem with the scientific method -- which doesn't pretend to arrive at the "absolute" truth anyway.

It's not a matter of absolute truth. The question is why are we able to predict anything at all, even in a probabilistic sense? With maximum entropy, there is no way to distinguish between order and a really fortunate series of fair coin flips. Both inductivism and falsificationism need to assume prior order to justify the success of science, so they are both in the same boat.

Re: The Paradox of Karl Popper

#48

Post by lisper »

yters wrote: post #46
lisper wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if the coin is fair you learn nothing. But that is simply because the theory that a coin is fair cannot be falsified with one data point. (Well, that's actually not quite true. It can't be falsified with a single data point which is "heads" or "tails". It could be falsified if the coin lands and breaks into two pieces revealing some internal mechanism that makes it unfair.) > if the coin is not fair, Solomonoff ind…

The problem is how do you gain these explanations in the first place without appealing to inductivism? The process of examining a thing to propose a theory about its operation seems indistinguishable in my mind from the inductivist approach of deriving general theories from particular observations. Both approaches make the same assumption of a consistent underlying order behind the observations we make.

This is the unsolved problem of "hypothesis formation." It's something that brains do that we do not yet fully understand. It's an active area of research. But the process of explanatory hypothesis formation is distinct from induction. Induction says, e.g. "Every crow I have ever seen has been black, therefore I conclude that all crows are black." (They aren't, BTW. http://www.birds.cornell.edu/crows/whitecrows.htm https://www.quora.com/Are-all-crows-black)

Re: The Paradox of Karl Popper

#49

Post by trukterious »

rexpop wrote: post #42
trukterious wrote: post #3

Popper sounds like a dude. We shouldn't confuse this apparent irascibility with dogmatism. He was passionate about his ideas: he published them and read criticism of them. He changed his mind about the testability of evolution, and other things. Intellectual humility is not the same quality as personal meekness and geniuses have always had difficult personalities. Philosophers doubly so. How could it be otherwise? Ho…

> geniuses have always had difficult personalities Not sure that's true.

There were exceptions. For instance, David Hume is reputed to have been an affable fellow.

But we nearly all of us underestimate how much creativity and energy is expended in trying to be normal (or to appear normal, which is much the same thing).

Re: The Paradox of Karl Popper

#50

Post by bo1024 »

This was a fun read, but I found the premise of the "paradox" frustrating. I get that it's kind of funny how the falsfiability guy is passionate and dogmatic about his views. But taking it seriously that this is a contradiction and asking "is falsification falsifiable" is a basic misunderstanding. It reminds me of popular misinterpretations of Godel's theorem.

The author seemed to not understand Popper's response, which was dead on of course. The type of thing that can be falsified is a scientific theory that makes empirical predictions. Falsification is a prescription for how to do science. It can be argued against from a philosophical standpoint, but it makes no predictions and cannot be proven wrong by observation. It's like asking if the 4th Commandment can be falsified -- the compiler gives a type error.

Again, enjoyable read, but this aspect was disappointing.

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