Clear5
Indeed!!! Now someone is getting it (sort of)!

And according to Popper's falsifiability criteria (and Popper himself) the Theory of Evolution itself is unfalsifiable (a better example, since i would argue that mathematics is not in the same categorey)!

In fact, using Popper's falsifiability criteria the Theory of Gravity would not be falsifiabile either. Why? Because it yields no testable predictions that could be used to prove or disprove it. If I drop an apple and it doesn't fall, does that mean the theory of gravity is wrong? No. It might mean that there is an unobserved force stronger than gravity keeping the apple suspended. So does this make the theory of gravity unscientific?

Except I would disagree with your conclusion that being "scientific" doesn't matter. If our definition of science excludes most of what we consider science, then why is that a good definition? So rather than scrapping our conception of science, what do you think we should do? Is there something Popper was missing? Can we save science?

[Edited on July 8, 2005 at 2:29 AM. Reason : ``]

7/8/2005 2:26:50 AM

Quote :

"You're also confused about what part of consumer choice theory i'm attacking, i'm attacking the assumption that people will maximize their utility, which isn't conditional on perfect information or imperfect information or any information at all. It's a behavioral assumption. "

But the assumption is not that they will maximise it, it's that they will seek to maximise it, which is entirely dependant on information availible. You can not seek to maximise utility gained from eating monkey brains if you do not percieve monkey brains to be something that provides you with utility.

But gravity is falsifiable. The force may be unobserved, but this means then that you need to find a way to observe the force. Science is an explination, not a proof.

[Edited on July 8, 2005 at 2:34 AM. Reason : dsafg]

7/8/2005 2:30:15 AM

1)

Quote :

"But the assumption is not that they will maximise it, it's that they will seek to maximise it, which is entirely dependant on information availible. You can not seek to maximise utility gained from eating monkey brains if you do not percieve monkey brains to be something that provides you with utility."

and that's still irrelevant to what i'm saying.

2)

Quote :

"But gravity is falsifiable. The force may be unobserved, but this means then that you need to find a way to observe the force. Science is an explination, not a proof"

Are you sure you know what falsifiable means? Let's play a game to demonstrate. I say that your homosexuality is caused by invisible monkeys in your brain. So, we do an x-ray and we don't see any monkeys. Of course not, they're invisible! So we disect your brain and we still don't see any. Of course not, they're invisible! We do a heat scan and we don't find any. Of course not, they're invisible! My theory is unfalsifiable.

In the same way, the theory of gravity on its own is unfalsifiable. If I drop an apple and it hangs in the air, then I could say "of course it didn't fall, there is another force acting more strongly on the apple". if you say there is no evidence for another force, then I can just say "just because you don't observe it doesn't mean it isn't there". Really there is no test that you could conduct that would finally make me reject gravity if I didn't want to. So really, anytime we test "a hypothesis" we are testing a bundle of hypothesises. This really blows the simple Scientific Method process (hypothesis, test, results, repeat --> theory) you learned in middle school all to hell.

[Edited on July 8, 2005 at 3:12 AM. Reason : ``]

7/8/2005 3:02:36 AM

are you people arguing about whether economics is merely scientific or not, or whether is it unuseful if it is not scientific? because although it may not be "scientific" according to the strict constraints placed on the word in this thread, it can still be very useful. The initial post relies on outrageous analogies to discredit utility, such as suicide, the point is that economics deals with FINANCIAL rational behavior. Yes, humans may not act rational all the time, but most large scale financial institutions, ones that shape the economy try to act in their best interest. For instance, I wouldn't expect a multi-national corporation to one day liquidate all their assets and set it on fire, i wouldn't expect a corporation to continually hire employees at an increasing rate well beyond the point of diminishing marginal returns, i mean mcdonalds on western is going to hire 10,000 students this year, a bank isn't going to loan out 100% of their assets to a man planning on buying all of earth's bananas, they are acting rationally....and from this assumption, although not 100% "scientific" USEFUL predictions can be made, and that is the point of economics, useful approximations, not innate truths. If everyone already knows this and you are just having a theoretical debate about whether it is scientific, then ok, but just thought i would make sure people weren't interpreting economics to be useless and silly simply because it isn't falsifiable

7/8/2005 9:00:14 AM

Quote :

"Mathematics isnt falsifiable because you can only prove mathematical theorems wrong with math's own terms, you cant observe it to be wrong."

Mathematics IS OBSERVABLE in the real world. Let's take something like pi. You can observe how pi is not 3 and is not 4 in the real world. I can take a circle in the real world, measure the diameter, cut three pieces of string to that length and they will fall a bit short of tracing the circumference. A forth piece will be much too long. Now suppose you take a piece of string and cut it to the length of the circumference it would measure close to pi. Obviously for practical reasons we can ever get this measurement precise enough to reflect a non-terminating decimal, but there are other means to prove pi in the real world. Mathematics proves itself everyday in the real world.

7/8/2005 12:58:24 PM

^lol, in attempting to show how math is falsifiable you choose pi.

GG.

I mean by your own statement you say we dont know what the number is and then claim that it can be proven.

[Edited on July 8, 2005 at 1:31 PM. Reason : ]

7/8/2005 1:27:24 PM

Heh, I expected a bit more. You weren't even able to see that trap.

pi/4 = 4 * arctan (1/5) - arctan (1/239)

There are several ways to denote what pi is in the real world. I expected you not to fall into that repeating decimal trap.

Math applies to and is proved in the real world, if it didn't, no one would use it

7/8/2005 1:40:48 PM

In fact

One could say math is the only truly empirical science.

7/8/2005 1:48:03 PM

I'd put science there too.

[Edited on July 8, 2005 at 1:50 PM. Reason : although it does jump to conclusions at time]

7/8/2005 1:50:02 PM

You'd put science there?

7/8/2005 1:50:48 PM

well, kind of depends on the kind of science, a lot of physics is empirical, but yeah I guess you're right, math really is the only purely empirical science

7/8/2005 1:54:51 PM

Well I view this way, physics is purely mathematical while chemistry is somewhat so.

Biology might very well be but we aren't advanced enough to know for sure.

7/8/2005 2:00:48 PM

^x5 eh, I was wrong with the pi thing maybe I should think google more before I post.

I still dont think mathematics is scientific according to popper because of its abstract nature and how mathematicians actually go about proving their ideas. Socks`` was right that biology would have been a better example.

Besides Im surprised that through out this thread you have been supporting the philosophy of a guy who wrote one of the best and harshest criticisms of Marxism ever in "open society and its enemies."

His priciple of falsifiability itself came about in part to be able to reject marxist ideas as being scientific.


[Edited on July 8, 2005 at 2:13 PM. Reason : ]

7/8/2005 2:11:26 PM

Mathematics is not abstract in nature, it's nature is to represent the real world. Mathematicians solve their problems in theory because it allows them to use proofs and techniques that have already been proven to work in the real world by past mathematicians. It's the same reason an engineer would design a bridge before he starts just putting shit together.

Quote :

"Besides Im surprised that through out this thread you have been supporting the philosophy of a guy who wrote one of the best and harshest criticisms of Marxism ever in "open society and its enemies.""

Well I haven't really mentioned Popper, but he was right, intial marxist theory was wrong, and really needed more to back it's claims. With time we find more and more supporting it, but it is still within the realm of a social science. Marx was a historian, not a mathematician or a scientist. I won't deny that communism makes some pretty big leaps, but so does economics or evolution, that doesn't mean it's wrong.

7/8/2005 2:25:39 PM

communist still study economics

communisim is not the end of money it just spreads the wealth

economics is about money, money is something all humans value. To hava a value system is to be rational. As far a "self interested" means that you must a value for everything including yourself.

Man is the measure of all things

It is his/ her self intrest that creates value and idea

7/8/2005 2:34:18 PM

Communism trancends economics. Economics tries to work around the problem of unlimited wants and limited resources. Communism has solved this problem, communism can control both supply and demand, thus rendering economics useless.

But this thread isn't about communism, so let's not dwell on this.

7/8/2005 2:49:06 PM

Quote :

"Well I haven't really mentioned Popper, but he was right, intial marxist theory was wrong"

Even if you admit initial marxist theory was wrong, his critique goes quite a bit beyond that and still applies to most of what you think about communism.

I think I might have to take back where I said I was wrong about pi, since that equation you gave is an approximation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pi#Numerical_approximations_of_.CF.80

But Im not sure it matters since pi isnt really a theorem or a theory.

Quote :

"One could say math is the only truly empirical science"

This is probably true, but falsifiability and empiricism dont really go together.

[Edited on July 8, 2005 at 3:39 PM. Reason : ]

7/8/2005 3:29:44 PM

Quote :

"Even if you admit initial marxist theory was wrong, his critique goes quite a bit beyond that and still applies to most of what you think about communism."

I've never really heard it mentioned in any books I have read on the subject so his little critque doesn't really have me up in arms.

Quote :

"I think I might have to take back where I said I was wrong about pi, since that equation you gave is an approximation."

Well it's well within the bounds of any practical uses, which is really what this discussion is about anyway. I could have just as well posted an algorithm they use to calculate pi on a computer.

Quote :

"But Im not sure it matters since pi isnt really a theorem or a theory."

True, but I think you're begining to see how any type of math can be proven in the real world.

Quote :

"This is probably true, but falsifiability and empiricism dont really go together."

They go together quite well, they may not be mutually exclusive, but if something can be proven it can generally be disproven as well.

7/8/2005 4:20:15 PM

Clear5, well i think you got a bit distracted from my question, so to bring it back to the original intent of this thread, let me sum up what I was hoping to convey.

Falsifiability alone is not a good criteria for what is "scientific", because it is almost impossible to test a single hypothesis and get a result that rejects it. Using the falsifiability criteria most everything we consider science now would become unscientific.

Instead we should realize, as philosopher of science Pierre Duhem did, that we test a "bundle" of hypothesis at the same time. When we drop the apple we don't only hypothesis that gravity will pull it down, but that no other force will push it up. In the same way, we cannot test the single hypothesis of whether people maximize their utility, but instead a group of hypothesis of what their utility functions will look like, trust, information, and whether they maximize their utility.

And anytime we get a result we don't like, we can scrap one hypothesis all together (like whether people are "self interested") or we can adjust our other hypothesis to preserve our favored hypothesis. Like I told 1337, this really fucks up our middle school idea of what constitutes a scientific theory--iow: there is no such thing as the scientific method as it was taught to us in grammar school.

So to preserve all of science we must come up with other criteria in addition to falsification and we must abandon the model of science we were presented in our high school textbooks. What other criteria should we add? I'm not sure yet. But the point is that our traditional conceptions of science are not adequate. THat was the point of this thread. That and maybe to teach some folks a little bit of what economics says and doesn't say.

[Edited on July 8, 2005 at 4:23 PM. Reason : ``]

7/8/2005 4:22:17 PM

I might post more later but for now,

Quote :

"Clear5, well i think you got a bit distracted from my question"

True, I would much rather argue trivial stuff that doesnt matter than try and solve the numerous philosophical and logical problems faced when trying to define science.

7/8/2005 4:30:35 PM

bttt

10/5/2005 10:11:14 PM