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The Paradox of Karl Popper

blogs.scientificamerican.com

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Re: The Paradox of Karl Popper

#11

Post by yters »

I never understood how falsificationism is supposed to workaround the shortcoming of inductivism.

Say I have coin that I predict will always flip heads. The first flip is tails. Hypothesis falsified! But, that still tells me nothing about the future if the coin is fair.

For falsification to work, we have to assume a priori there is not a uniform distribution over events. In which case, we can do something like Solmonoff induction anyways.

So, it looks like falsification is only useful if induction is also useful. In which case, falsification is not a workaround for induction's problems.

Re: The Paradox of Karl Popper

#13

Post by PKop »

melling wrote: post #7

Nassim Taleb, the author of Fooled by Randomness and the Black Swan, is a fan of Popper.

An excerpt of his thoughts on this subject, very interesting to contemplate the political implications of this:

"The Most Intolerant Wins: The Dictatorship of the Small Minority" [0]

[0] https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dict...

"...Clearly can democracy –by definition the majority — tolerate enemies? The question is as follows: “ Would you agree to deny the freedom of speech to every political party that has in its charter the banning the freedom of speech?” Let’s go one step further, “Should a society that has elected to be tolerant be intolerant about intolerance?”

Re: The Paradox of Karl Popper

#14

Post by keithpeter »

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…

Possibly of interest. Miller was teaching at Warwick university some decades ago.

https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1983/04/28/the-karl-popper-...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Miller_(philosopher)

Re: The Paradox of Karl Popper

#15

Post by lisper »

yters wrote: post #11

I never understood how falsificationism is supposed to workaround the shortcoming of inductivism. Say I have coin that I predict will always flip heads. The first flip is tails. Hypothesis falsified! But, that still tells me nothing about the future if the coin is fair. For falsification to work, we have to assume a priori there is not a uniform distribution over events. In which case, we can do something like Solmon…

Falsification is only a small part of the story. The other part, the much more important part, is explanatory power. David Deutsch does an excellent job of explaining this in his book The Fabric of Reality, mainly in chapter 7. Highly recommended.

Induction, BTW, is completely invalid as a mode of reasoning (speaking here of logical induction, not mathematical induction). You can flip a coin 10,000 times and have it come up heads every time and still not be able to validly conclude that it will come up heads every time (there are a lot of ancillary assumptions that go into the deductive inference, none of which are justified). On the other hand, you can examine the coin, see that there are heads on both sides, and immediately conclude (soundly) that it will come up heads every time because you can provide an explanation: one of the two sides must come up, and they are both heads!

Re: The Paradox of Karl Popper

#16

Post by 13415 »

As far as I remember, that was the worst article about a philosopher that I've ever read. The author is resentful and pretentious from the start to the end and tries his best to portray Popper as a kind of silly person.

If you haven't read the article yet, my advice is not to read it.

Re: The Paradox of Karl Popper

#17

Post by Nasrudith »

yters wrote: post #11

I never understood how falsificationism is supposed to workaround the shortcoming of inductivism. Say I have coin that I predict will always flip heads. The first flip is tails. Hypothesis falsified! But, that still tells me nothing about the future if the coin is fair. For falsification to work, we have to assume a priori there is not a uniform distribution over events. In which case, we can do something like Solmon…

Theoretically couldn't one obtain the exact result desired from a physical die or coin by rolling or flipping it with the proper degree of precision?

Probability is nearly always heuristic technically due to lacking perfect knowledge. Quantum effects appear to involve some true randomness.

Re: The Paradox of Karl Popper

#19

Post by coldtea »

yters wrote: post #11

I never understood how falsificationism is supposed to workaround the shortcoming of inductivism. Say I have coin that I predict will always flip heads. The first flip is tails. Hypothesis falsified! But, that still tells me nothing about the future if the coin is fair. For falsification to work, we have to assume a priori there is not a uniform distribution over events. In which case, we can do something like Solmon…

It's not supposed to workaround induction's problems.

Re: The Paradox of Karl Popper

#20

Post by coldtea »

mulligan wrote: post #12
melling wrote: post #7

Nassim Taleb, the author of Fooled by Randomness and the Black Swan, is a fan of Popper.

> Popper abhorred philosophers who argue that scientists adhere to theories for cultural and political rather than rational reasons.

Well, he might abhorred them, but he was empirically wrong in tons of cases on the matter.
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