Why does the government hide UFO's?

So a claim is only falsifiable IF it is false. Then if the claim is true, as indeed my measurement would confirm, it isn't falsifiable.

Spare me the petty ad homs Sarkus. So the existential claim of zebras existing is definitely unfalsifiable. Unfalsifiable if it IS true, and unfalsifiable if it is false. Thanks for confirming that.

 

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These things are testable and falsifiable. White it is true that we cannot literally be there to test them with our eyes, that does not mean we cannot test them.

Saying the BB occurred 13.7 billion years ago is certainly falsifiable.
All it would take is to find star remnants that are 15 billion years old. Boom - falsified.
The fact that we do not seem to find any indication of activity that leads us to believe that the universe was around more than 13.7By ago is giving strength to the BBT.


The evolution of man from proto-apes is also falsifiable.
If the bone structures from a proto-ape did not match those of early humans, it would very strongly suggest that the links is - at the very least - distant.
The fact that we fail to find large discrepancies between proto-ape anatomy and human anatomy lends strength to the evolutionary link.

 

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Apply the claim of falsifiability to a prediction that has not been tested yet. It is more applicable that way.

 

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"I will eventually encounter a zebra if I look for one." That's a prediction that is certainly testable, but certainly not falsifiable.

 

How would you determine the age of star remnants?

So evolution is not in this case falsified at all. Just modified in terms of duration.

 

“A million successful experiments cannot prove a theory correct, but one failed experiment can prove a theory wrong.” Perhaps you’ve heard someone use this cliché to describe the scientific method as a tough-minded and unsentimental pursuit of an accurate understanding of nature. The sentiment has its roots in Karl Popper’s mid-20th-Century account of scientific investigation called “falsificationism,” so it is perhaps unsurprising that Popper’s views have been popular among many proponents of science. Unfortunately, if we are to take the cliché literally, and in the way Popper intended, the central dictum of falsificationism turns out to be false. While something of the attitude implied by the cliché may remain, Popper’s original point about the logical structure of scientific discovery has difficulty standing up to scrutiny."--------

https://1000wordphilosophy.wordpress.com/2014/05/12/karl-popper-and-falsificationism/

 

I believe in zebras. But i do not think there are any with more than one head.

 

Falsifiability applies to claims of the unknown: to theories, beliefs etc.
If a claim is true then one can still assess whether the claim is falsifiable by assuming from the outset that it's veracity is unknown... and seeing whether there exists a test that could confirm it is false. i.e. one creates a theoretical position where the issue of falsifiability becomes applicable (by assuming the claim is an unknown).

Where is the ad hominem?? You think me identifying that you are confusing the two terms is an ad hominem?? If you're going to throw around accusations, I suggest you know what the accusations actually mean.
And do you now understand the difference between being testable and being falsifiable?

It depends how you determine whether a test is allowed or not, and how you define the term you're claiming exists.
E.g. if I define a zebra as an animal that exists on earth with a certain DNA code then, theoretically, I could examine all life on earth and do DNA tests to establish whether one exists or not. But I would need to be sure that all life was tested. So this is a matter of the test at least being impractical, even if one does accept it theoretically would falsify the claim.
The more specific the definition of that which you claim exists, and the more you can limit it's possible location, the more likely it is that it can be falsified.

 

Why would one want to assume a claim that is verified as true is still falsifiable? Our work is done. The claim is proven. There is nothing left to be done. Why do we need to go back and doubt it's truth with conjectures about it's falsifiability.

I already told you that there was a difference between testability and falsifiability here:

I even said confusing the two is a problem. Then you claim I'm confusing the two and confirm my claim that they are different. I was never confused to begin with. Your claim that I am was a baseless ad hom that directly contradicted what I said. Quit ad homing. It doesn't help you make your points in the least.

You could never examine every place on earth to rule out for sure that zebras exist. There could always be some place they moved to while you were looking in another place. Therefore it's an unfalsifiable claim that zebras exist.

 

"Why" is irrelevant. The point stands that one can assess any claim as being falsifiable or not, irrespective of whether the claim is ultimately true or not, by assuming for the purposes of that assessment that the veracity of the claim is unknown.

You need to distinguish between an ad hominem and a simple misunderstanding of what you had said. An ad hom is an argument against the person in lieu of an argument against what the person says. I have not done that. What I have done is, more technically, argue a straw man due to misunderstanding your position slightly, believing that you were struggling to comprehend the difference. I still think you don't grasp what falsifiability is.

Hence why I said "But I would need to be sure that all life was tested. So this is a matter of the test at least being impractical, even if one does accept it theoretically would falsify the claim."
i.e. if you could satisfy the requirement for all life being tested (impractical) then you could theoretically falsify the claim.
Take the following claim as another example: "There is a spider in a matchbox in my desk." This is falsifiable. The only difference between that claim and the claim that zebras exist is one of scale (of what would be required to falsify the claim). The claim that zebras exist is unfalsifiable in practice rather than theory. This at least distinguishes it from claims that are unfalsifiable even in theory.

 

Fine. You go ahead worrying about whether claims, if assumed to be unknown, are falsifiable or not, and I'll just take verified claims to be true. Seems a huge waste of time and energy to me.

You don't need to speculate about how I am at all or what my mental state is. You can continue to discuss the issue logically just as I have. Dragging in allegations of me being "confused" are ad homs and erroneous ones at that. Do you know how to discuss issues with making it personal?

But you'd never know if you tested "all life." Did you know we have yet to discover many new species? So what you define as "all life" may not be all life at all, and even ruling out all known life will never rule out the species of zebra which maybe you haven't yet encountered.

 

This is why the our generation is trash...

 

Never know. Maybe a few neutrinos got created from cosmic rays interacting with earth's atmosphere or from the big bang or even from the potassium of your own body. Seems we could never rule them out completely.

Right. So the statement "black holes exist", even if defined specifically, is unfalsifible.

So what exactly would be a wrong fossil that would falsify man's evolution from apes, given the already abundant evidence we have for that?

 

So how exactly would you falsify the claim that there is dark matter in my garage? And how would this be any different from saying there is an invisible dragon in my garage? In both cases we are positing entities that are undetectable. Hence they are both unfalsifiable. Not detecting it iow would not prove it isn't there.

 

Correct. We don't have a theory of dark matter yet.

The moment someone comes up with a theory, that theory will make predictions. For example, maybe the model posits a particle more massive than the the Higg's boson, but less massive than a breadbox. We can go looking for that particle. If we find no such particle, that does not bode well for the theory.

If, on the other hand, the theory made no such prediction: "the particle can be any size at all" then it's not much of a theory.

 

In general, any theory "X exists" is unfalsifiable; it is also very unscientific.

These are bad examples, that are leading us off track of what the purpose of a falsifiable theory is.

 

If it helps you understand what falsifiable means then it is no waste of time. But the point about theories in science, MR, is that they are not often verified to be true. Successful theories are verified as merely holding when applied to the evidence at hand. When the theory doesn't fit the evidence then the theory is falsified. I am not sure why you are dragging the discussion down such a path where it is patently not particularly applicable?

I am entitled to comment on what you write, and what you wrote appeared as though you were confused. If I was wrong, so be it, but being wrong does not make it an ad hominem. I still hold that your understanding of falsifiability is confused. Hence the efforts by everyone to explain it to you.

You brought in the notion of confusion (of falsifiability with testability) of others, not me. I merely commented that it is your understanding that appears confused - hence the efforts by everyone to explain it to you. And yet you have the gall to complain that such a comment is somehow an ad hominem (not that it is) when you initiated the comment? Are you going to complain that everyone who disagrees with you is by implication ad homineming you, because surely any disagreement must mean they think you are confused about the issue, right?

I do, thanks. Do you?

Hence my rather specific comment which you even highlighted: "But I would need to be sure that all life was tested"
If I can't be sure then the claim would be unfalsifiable, but if I could then it would be a matter of impracticality.

For example, if we limit the definition of zebra to "existing on earth" and also define it as having a certain minimum size then it might be possible, in the far future, to dissect the Earth into chunks of matter far smaller than the size of a zebra in the search for the creature, thus providing a test by which the claim might be falsified. I.e. if the entire applicable universe can be examined then the claim can be falsified.
Yes, it is a rather extreme example but shows how tests that can falsify claims might exist but simply be impractical or unfeasible with current technology.
Personally I would say that it is currently not possible to falsify such claims, but not rule it out entirely.

 

You even admitted you were wrong for calling me confused. Now you're defending it? What's so hard about just not commenting on how I am at all? Does it make you feel superior to put people down? You're certainly not qualified to divine my state of mind at any time. Just quit ad homing me, ok? I know everybody else even mods turns these threads into diatribes about how confused or deluded or dishonest or crazy I am, but that doesn't make it ok. Oh..and I simply said there is some confusion on the terms testability and falsifiability. I never claimed that anyone in particular was confused like you did and then even admitted being wrong about it.

 

No...realizing falsification is a completely superfluous action after a claim has already been verified does not help me understand falsifiability any better. It remains the nonsense it was when Popper first proclaimed it. There are scientific claims that are unfalsifiable, and there are unscientific claims that are falsifiable. There is even a distinction to be made between testable and falsifiable. I understand falsifiability well enough to know it fails as an adequate standard for deciding anything about a claim or a theory. Testable yes. Falsifiabilty not so much.

But as I said you could never be sure all life was tested. No one has the ability to do that. And even if you could, it wouldn't rule out zebras possibly being missed in all that testing. So "zebras exist" would always remain unfalsifiable.

I would agree with that with the caveat that any unfalsifiable claim might one day be falsifiable given the vast possibilities open to future technology.