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The Paradox of Karl Popper

blogs.scientificamerican.com

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Re: The Paradox of Karl Popper

#51

Post by raverbashing »

nonbel wrote: post #45
raverbashing wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 is…

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

There is no way to have 100% understanding of a specific person to have a designer drug for every condition.

Not even Aspirin is 100% effective nor we have a complete understanding of how it works (though there were some discoveries on that regard around 20yrs ago, I think)

It's hard for physics and it's impossible for biology (and other fields) to come up with completely accurate predictions.

Re: The Paradox of Karl Popper

#52

Post by nonbel »

raverbashing wrote: post #51
nonbel wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 is…

> If you had a complete understanding you would only apply the drug when it would work and have 100% success rate. There is no way to have 100% understanding of a specific person to have a designer drug for every condition. Not even Aspirin is 100% effective nor we have a complete understanding of how it works (though there were some discoveries on that regard around 20yrs ago, I think) It's hard for physics and it's…

Designing reproducible experiments and making accurate predictions are both important, but they are totally different things. Somehow you've combined them into one concept.

Re: The Paradox of Karl Popper

#53

Post by yters »

lisper wrote: post #48
yters wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 h…

Yes, so it seems like falsificationism just pushes the fundamental problem elsewhere and renames it.

The basic problem of distinguishing between patterns and luck undermines both falsification and induction.

As far as I know, there is no resolution to the problem. We just irrationally assume there is no problem out of habit, as Hume states in his original work. A leap of faith, if you will.

Re: The Paradox of Karl Popper

#54

Post by jessriedel »

ecocentrik wrote: post #41
jessriedel wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

> Taking that assurance at face value was naïve. The taxi thing was a motif.

You sure do like the word naive!

Do you think he lied about being instructed by the staff member that the taxi driver would know where the guy lived? If not, then you're arguing that the author, having been instructed by the staff that he would not need directions, should have summoned his worldly wisdom and realized this couldn't be true. But the mere bias of someone's staff, which is of course predictable, does not explain why that staff would exaggerate in a way that will predictably be refuted, i.e., when the author gets into the cab, he'll find out they don't know! So you're arguing that he's naive for not assuming that the staff is both biased and stupid. But cab drivers knowing where a local minor celebrity lives is not that crazy of a proposition.

> How would you define failure in this scenario?

Rather than reporting unambiguous (i.e., un-manipulatable) facts that are clear evidence of silliness, he mostly uses rhetorical techniques which are completely up to the author's discretion. When he does report facts, they are completely consistent with Popper being a retired intellectual giant who is just old, forgetful, and busy. Trying to make Popper look bad because he's a forgetful 90-year-old comes off as very distasteful.

Re: The Paradox of Karl Popper

#55

Post by akvadrako »

raverbashing wrote: post #10
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…

> 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…

Are you really talking about Popper's ideas or just a simplified popular understanding of 'falsifiable'?

Popper never said ideas needed to be based on reproducible evidence. He also emphasised explanations over just predictability.

Re: The Paradox of Karl Popper

#56

Post by stareatgoats »

phyller wrote: post #28

Ha, I didn't know about him before. Sounds really interesting. Reminds me a lot of Socrates. I have recently been reading the classics about Socrates and was surprised to realize that a) his main mission seemed to be to show people they didn't know as much as they thought b) he was basically a huge troll, even if he was usually correct c) he was such a huge troll that the Athenians actually put him to death for it vi…

Popper is immensely influential in science, well worth a closer study. Agree there are some similarities with Socrates but as far as I know there was no drive to have Popper drink poison (a tribute to the imprint of that ancient Athenian on modern society maybe). Except perhaps in communist countries, the expressed antithesis of Popper's "open society".

Re: The Paradox of Karl Popper

#57

Post by lisper »

yters wrote: post #53
lisper wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 h…

Yes, so it seems like falsificationism just pushes the fundamental problem elsewhere and renames it. The basic problem of distinguishing between patterns and luck undermines both falsification and induction. As far as I know, there is no resolution to the problem. We just irrationally assume there is no problem out of habit, as Hume states in his original work. A leap of faith, if you will.

No. Falsification is necessary but not sufficient. The best theory is one that has two properties: 1) it is consistent with all the observed data (i.e. has not been falsified) and 2) it is a "good explanation". Explaining what is meant by "good explanation" is too long for an HN comment, but roughly speaking it means that it is concise and brittle -- any modification would cause it to become inconsistent with the data.

(So for example, conspiracy theories fail as explanatory theories not because they are inconsistent with the data -- they generally aren't -- but rather because they are not concise and brittle.)

Re: The Paradox of Karl Popper

#59

Post by yters »

lisper wrote: post #57
yters wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, so it seems like falsificationism just pushes the fundamental problem elsewhere and renames it. The basic problem of distinguishing between patterns and luck undermines both falsification and induction. As far as I know, there is no resolution to the problem. We just irrationally assume there is no problem out of habit, as Hume states in his original work. A leap of faith, if you will.

No. Falsification is necessary but not sufficient. The best theory is one that has two properties: 1) it is consistent with all the observed data (i.e. has not been falsified) and 2) it is a "good explanation". Explaining what is meant by "good explanation" is too long for an HN comment, but roughly speaking it means that it is concise and brittle -- any modification would cause it to become inconsistent with the dat…

That sounds like Solmonoff induction. But, there is still the same problem. Why are concise explanations better? Solomnoff justified this assumption by claiming we are generated by a computable prior. But, that again pushes the question back to why we can assume this. Otherwise, no observation justifies a computable prior over random luck.

Re: The Paradox of Karl Popper

#60

Post by gboudrias »

stareatgoats wrote: post #56
phyller wrote: post #28

Ha, I didn't know about him before. Sounds really interesting. Reminds me a lot of Socrates. I have recently been reading the classics about Socrates and was surprised to realize that a) his main mission seemed to be to show people they didn't know as much as they thought b) he was basically a huge troll, even if he was usually correct c) he was such a huge troll that the Athenians actually put him to death for it vi…

Popper is immensely influential in science, well worth a closer study. Agree there are some similarities with Socrates but as far as I know there was no drive to have Popper drink poison (a tribute to the imprint of that ancient Athenian on modern society maybe). Except perhaps in communist countries, the expressed antithesis of Popper's "open society".

> Popper is immensely influential in science, well worth a closer study

Yep, pretty much invented the falsification principle. Imagine a time when scientists often tried to prove things true. That was science before Popper. This makes him the greatest contributor to science that I know of since Francis Bacon.

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