Episode 41: The Problems of Refutation & Popper Without Refutation (part 1)
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Transcript
[00:00:11] Blue: Welcome to the theory of anything podcast. Hey guys, how’s it going going
[00:00:15] Red: great?
[00:00:16] Blue: How are you good great? Good morning All right. Well, we’re gonna talk about popper again today Let me explain why I’ve done this So I signed up to give a short 15 minute presentation at a popper conference And I’m calling the presentation popper without refutation So it’s gonna be really short and I’m including that in this There’s actually an extended conversation that I wanted to have and I don’t know if I can fit it into a single episode We’ll kind of go through it fast, but it may need a future treatment. That’s in a bit more detail I guess we’ll see the idea here though is that over time over years of reading Karl popper I collected a series of problems specifically around the concept of refutation that bothered me that I thought this can’t be right what I’m reading in popper and Something happened. It was a conversation with Danny Frederick.
[00:01:04] Blue: I’ll talk about it as part of the presentation Where he explained to me what popper really meant and it turns out popper uses some terms idiosyncratically So what I thought he was saying wasn’t what he was saying and once I understood what he was really saying It clarified a lot and I started to realize now that I knew what to look for I started to realize a lot of these problems I’ve been collecting they’re Resolvable and they’ve actually got pretty good answers So I’m gonna go through first the problems of refutation Then I’m gonna talk about popper without refutation and then if we have time I will move on to some of the other things I’ve discovered including for instance What’s the demarcation that popper came up with most people say it’s between science and non -science I actually am no longer convinced that’s the best way to define it and I feel like there’s a number of clarifications you can make the popper by understanding his special use of language and replacing it with more common terms and it starts to make more sense So let me take you through first the problems that I had come up with so I had a series of problems I had collected so the first one was this idea that anomalies anomalous observations They don’t actually refute anything now This comes from Coon Thomas Coon is a famous historian of science slash epistemologist who is at odds with popper and He in his book the structure of scientific revolutions, which by the way I highly recommend paparians should not be afraid of Thomas Coon They should I think you know the vast majority of his book They will sign off on really easily find to be great the last chapters the problem and there I feel like he’s just obviously wrong
[00:02:36] Blue: So I don’t think there’s anything to be concerned about with Thomas Coon I think paparians should love Thomas Coon even though he was at odds with popper on some things But Thomas Coon in his book the structure of scientific revolution By the way, Thomas Coon is more famous than popper. And so people know about Thomas Coon more so than they know about popper Which is an injustice because popper was better than Thomas Coon So Coon he says nevertheless anomalous experiences may not be identified with falsifying ones Indeed, I doubt that the later exists If any and every failure to fit were grounds for theory rejection all theories ought to be rejected at all times This is really a very valid statement. And in fact, it’s been formalized as the doom -quying thesis So the doom -quying thesis you can look it up on Wikipedia It says it’s the it’s that all empirical hypotheses require one or more background assumptions Because that’s true when you have an anomalous Observation something that doesn’t match what you expected.
[00:03:36] Blue: So it doesn’t match prediction There’s no way to know if the problem is with the theory or with something in your background knowledge In fact, it may even just be something tacit or assumed in your background knowledge that you didn’t even realize you were assuming Because of this Coon’s statement is actually correct that anomalous Observations do not refute a theory and never can refute a theory given this is this a problem for popper Well, some people think it is I’m going to argue that it isn’t but let’s put it out there as a legitimate problem That we want to see an answer to now the next one was this idea of tentative refutation versus tentative support So typically people when they talk about refutation versus verification or sometimes support Let’s go with the word verification for the moment. They talk about how there’s an asymmetry between refutation and verification and The asymmetry is described in various ways.
[00:04:26] Blue: Unfortunately a lot of the ways people describe it is not correct And popper’s actual statement about what the asymmetry is I was surprised when I actually looked it up and read it for myself because it was not what I was expecting So let me take this quote from David Deutsch from the logic of experimental test Which is probably one of the best papers ever written on scientific epistemology Although it has a statement here that I’m going to question a little he says the asymmetry between refutation tentative and support non -existent In scientific methodology is better understood in this way by regarding theories as explanations Then through popper’s own argument from the logic of predictions appealing to what what has been called the arrow of modus ponens Scientific scientific theories are only approximately models propositions, but they are precisely explanations So the key thing here is the first statement that the asymmetry between refutation and support is that tenant refutations tentative It’s never absolute, but support is non -existent I think a lot of people would read that statement They’d say that just isn’t true when eddington when eddington went out and he did his expedition to test general relativity during an eclipse And he found that the observations matched mind science predictions rather than newtons In what sense was that not support for general relativity? And that would be a completely valid question that deserves a completely valid strong answer Now you might say well, it didn’t support general relativity.
[00:05:47] Blue: It refuted newton instead Okay, so but then okay, but if that’s true Then how is that different than just saying it supported relative general relativity because once you’re in a theory to theory comparison And you’re doing a crucial test Why not just think of the word support as meaning that your competitors got refuted, right? I mean, why is it we have such a strong statement against the idea of support or verification When really it seems like within the theory to theory comparison, which is what we’re doing with the crucial test We might as well just call it support and be done because that’s what most people call So for that matter, there’s a second problem here. So let’s take the idea of the perihelion of mercury Let me explain what that is. It was found that the orbit of mercury didn’t match newton’s predictions Now this wasn’t the first time something like this had happened They had also found that jupiter’s orbit didn’t match newtons predictions And in fact, as we’ll talk about it in a little bit That was what led to the discovery of the planet urinus Is they saw that jupiter wasn’t matching the orbit it was supposed to they said, okay What’s how much is it off by and then they calculated that must mean there’s a Gravitational body.
[00:06:52] Unknown: We don’t know about a plant.
[00:06:54] Blue: We haven’t discovered yet And then they went out and they looked for it where it should be based on theory and they found oh
[00:06:59] Red: and there it was
[00:07:00] Blue: Yes So the exact same thing happened with mercury mercury’s orbit was off and they said well, there must be a planet We don’t know about so that they even named the planet vulcan by the way They were convinced there was a planet vulcan they went out and they looked for it and they didn’t find it Nobody really knew what to make of that But it was not perceived as a refutation of newtons theory And it was just perceived as well. There’s something we just don’t know about There’s like a gravitational body that we’re missing somehow is what they believed Now there was also something called the the michelson morally experiment I hope i’m pronouncing that right what they found was that when the earth is traveling towards the sun So you think about an orbit going around the sun At some points you’re going kind of further away from the sun and some points are coming closer towards the sun So they had this idea that they should be able to measure the speed of light As being faster when they’re going towards the sun and slower when they’re going away from the sun So they tried that and what they found is that the speed of light was exactly the same No matter whether you were headed towards the source of the light or away from the source of the light As those of us since we live in the future and we have general relativity That’s the right answer right because light’s the maximum speed That’s not true under newton as far as anyone understood at the time the perihelion of mercury was an anomalous observation But then again, so was orbit of jupiter being off.
[00:08:21] Blue: That was an anomalous observation also And the fact that light didn’t change speed whether you were heading towards the source of light or away from the source of light That’s an anomalous observation. Did that cause us to you know refute? No, no Nobody considered either of these to be serious problems for newton other than einstein einstein was was weird He decided and you know what some people say he wasn’t even aware of the mickelson moorley experiment And i’m not sure that these observations were actually what motivated him Looking into general relativity in the first place So did these refute newton? Well, they didn’t there was certainly no perception that they refuted newton And if they did refute newton, then why was why doesn’t the the orbit of jupiter being off refute newton? In which that in which case we know it didn’t in that case. It was just that we missed a planet You know In under what circumstances can we actually say an anomalous observation refutes a theory? It’s not at all obvious. In fact, or whether it is kind of obvious it doesn’t anomalous observations do not refute theories on their own That’s really the the honest truth because of the doom coin thesis If these can’t refute a theory even if you know because the doom coin thesis then in what sense was the eddyton So we have these observations that that ultimately einstein is going to explain the perennial mercury mercury and the mickelson moorley moorley experiment They’re going to eventually be explained explained by einstein’s theory We’re going to find out that really you have to know about general relativity to explain these anomalous observations Okay, nobody knows it at the time. Nobody cares.
[00:10:00] Blue: It’s it’s not even considered a serious problem. einstein comes along He makes his theory now in theory. He now can explain these did that cause everyone to say Oh, you know, einstein can explain the perihelion of mercury and the the moorley experiment Didn’t change anybody’s minds nor should it because at that point it would just be an ad hoc explanation It would be an explanation that was made up to explain specific problems And generally we in popper says we should never count such an explanation until it’s testable What really convinced people was the eddyton expedition They went out They had this observation that no one had ever thought to look for before That seemed weird that the stars around an eclipse would move because the sun has a gravitational body that’s causing the light to bend It’s so far outside of our experience or anything we would have guessed They check it. It’s true And they come away feeling like general relativity has been supported by this experiment And I would say it has okay It has been supported by this experiment and when popperians insist that there’s no such thing as support I think they’re right But only if you understand the word support in a very narrow idiosyncratic sort of way And I don’t think most people look at it that way So I think it’s they’re doing themselves a disservice by insisting that there’s no such thing as support Okay, so the absolute verification fallacy.
[00:11:19] Blue: I need to talk about this So when I’ve asked people about this when I’ve said before Okay, typically we’re looking for crucial experiments that are inside of a theory to theory comparison Then why can’t we just say that an observation, you know, the crucial experiment came out supporting one of the two theories Rather than insisting that we say we refuted one of the two theories Now I’ve asked this question of numerous popperians Okay, and the answer I typically get back is that there’s an asymmetry between refutation and verification because Verification is impossible You can’t verify anything because the word’s verification implies certainty and nothing is certain Whereas the word’s refutation for some reason don’t imply certainty that I’ve always asked people Why don’t the word’s refutation implies certainty? It just doesn’t is the answer I get back and I’ll say well
[00:12:10] Red: stupid answer Do you say that’s a stupid answer?
[00:12:12] Blue: It is a stupid answer. Okay, and then I’ll say it And why does verification have to imply certainty? Why can’t I don’t think that verification Supports certainty necessarily any more than refutation. I agree So the absolute verification fallacy is the idea that the asymmetry between refutation and verification is because the word verification Always means verified with certainty Whereas the word refutation always means refuted tentatively Since one can never be certain verification is impossible that refutation is possible. Now, let me emphasize this really is dumb Okay, this this is if this is truly the source of asymmetry that popper intended, which by the way, it’s not But if it was then popper’s wrong. Okay, because this is this is clearly just a fallacy And why not just say that the editing expedition tentatively supports general relativity? That seems like a completely valid thing to say and then here’s what makes it worse It’s the fact that according to popper the word certainty doesn’t imply certainty So this is a quote from popper from objective knowledge page 78 There’s a common sense notion of certainty, which means briefly certain enough for practical purposes When I look at my watch, which is very reliable and it shows me that it is eight o ‘clock and I hear that That it ticks indication the watch is not stopped Then I am reasonably certain or certain for all practical purposes that is close to eight o ‘clock. Okay, so Popper understood this idea That even the word certain doesn’t imply certainty. So there’s no there’s no way he thought verification implied certainty So there’s something wrong with the absolute verification fallacy.
[00:13:51] Blue: It’s a misunderstanding of pop for our purposes then We’re going to look at this idea of single theory versus theory to theory comparison If you have a single theory and you don’t have an alternative theory, then really refutations are impossible and verifications are impossible They’re both impossible if you’re within a theory to theory comparison
[00:14:09] Blue: Then refutations are possible But then again, so is support or maybe verification all the challenge out a little bit There’s verification and support aren’t really the same thing Because all you’re really saying is is that we’re verifying one’s more accurate than the other Or we’re supporting it because one was one passed the test and one didn’t When I put it in this way, this really seems like it calls into question at least a certain common understanding of poppers asymmetry Which in fact is actually a misunderstanding of popper’s point The other one is this idea of corroboration and support So poppers had this concept of corroboration Which is really just identical to the concept of support And in fact popper uses it as a synonym for the word support So here’s a quote from popper from the logic of scientific discovery page 10 It should be noted that a positive decision in a test Can only temporarily support the theory for subsequent negative decisions in future tests may always overthrow it So long as the theory withstands detailed and severe tests, we may say that it is corroborated So here poppers clearly using the word support and corroborate it as synonyms Proboration is a kind of support Furthermore popper believed in the idea of corroboration as a matter of degrees Which may surprise some people but here’s a quote from popper to prove it This is logic of scientific discovery page 248 Instead of discussing the probability of our hypothesis, we should try to assess with what tests what trials it has with stood That is we should try to assess how far it has been able to prove its fitness to survive by standing up to tests In brief, we should try to assess how far it has been corroborated Clearly he’s talking about matter of degrees here.
[00:15:46] Blue: So the idea of I’m going to get to this the idea of strengthening a theory many popperians will tell you it’s impossible but Or supporting a theory supporting it in degrees. They’ll tell you it’s impossible. I do not find that in popper Okay, popper himself does not seem to have ever made such a point In fact, this idea of degrees of corroboration. That’s actually what popper calls it. He calls it degrees of corroboration He originally called it degrees of confirmation He dropped it because he he was dealing with the vienna circle, which is a famous group of philosophers To them the word confirmation implied proving the theory true, right? Which popper believed to be impossible So when he found that even when he found that they were misunderstanding the term He switched to a different term that had a slightly different connotation But if you go look up the word confirmation and the word corroboration, you will find that they are absolutely Synonyms of each other. I I didn’t put it here on the slide But I did go look them up and the word corroboration means to confirm something and they’re defined in terms of each other Right. I mean, they they are literally just synonyms Okay Now it’s true that synonyms usually have slightly different connotations and in this case they do the word confirmation Means something stronger in most people’s minds than the word corroboration It means the same thing, but it means it in a stronger degree And so popper was probably right to get away from the word confirmation and to go with the word Proveration because it got people closer to the concept.
[00:17:13] Blue: He was thinking But in fact, it doesn’t matter what we call it Okay, we can call it support corroboration confirmation We can call it verification that maybe not the best word for it But we could if we wanted to and it would all mean the same thing. Okay Now because of this problem There are some Deutschians in particular. So Deutschians are proparians That feel that popper’s corroboration is mistaken Now I’ve talked to numerous ones I’ve got a blog post from Brett Hall who’s you know, nobody doubts his Deutschian chops where he talks about he’s got he’s not sure he agrees with popper’s corroboration He doesn’t he doesn’t think that it’s Maybe a valid concept. Okay, but let’s consider let’s consider something here back with the example of the perihelion of mercury or the Mickelson -Morley experiment Technically those quote refute Newton even though nobody saw it that way if that’s true And if there’s no such thing as corroboration and it’s an unimportant concept Then we wouldn’t need the Eddington expedition. It would be unnecessary to test the theory We would be able to say look, it’s already got these two problems. We’ve solved it. So this is the better theory We’ve refuted Newton. Well, no one’s gonna accept that and for good reason one of them is because as I said That would be an ad hoc theory Okay, that that would be you’ve made you’ve made this theory that solves these two problems and has no other testable consequences That would be ad hoc if you start allowing ad hoc theories popper’s epistemology breaks down entirely You can always come up with an ad hoc theory to explain an anomalous Observation so that would really not make sense.
[00:18:46] Blue: We really want this concept of testing something strongly And corroborating it through tests. It’s it’s somehow very important and yet Based on how a lot of people understand popper. It seems like it should be unimportant So we’re missing something here. In fact, if we really took this idea that corroboration was unimportant seriously Then we would never need to test the theory ever Because the reason why you make a new theory is to solve an existing problem With an old theory So every new theory Will therefore be quote better than the old theory because it solves some problem that the old theory has Plus it has no additional problems. Hopefully so going out and testing it would be unnecessary Well, that’s that’s silly. Of course. We need to go test Theories right and it’s testing as strongly as possible and remember that quote I just got from popper about the how far it has been corroborated We want to see how severely the theory has been tested So the concept of corroboration from popper is an incredibly important part of his epistemology His epistemology does not work without it because otherwise everything becomes ad hoc testing would be unnecessary So we’re missing something here. What is it that we’re missing is what I’m asking now The other thing is is that there are certain theories that require verification now I actually got this from something you said in one of our podcast cameo You were talking about popper’s idea of refutation and then you kind of add it in or verification And I was thinking about that because paparians really hate this idea of verification.
[00:20:20] Blue: It’s supposed to not exist But there there really are some theories That require verification Now I should probably note that that when I say this they’re not really true scientific theories I’m stretching the word theory a little bit here, but not in a way that’s necessarily inappropriate In fact popper I’m going to use an actual example from popper where he allows the word theory to be stretching this way Okay, so one example would be big foot exists the theory that big foot exists How how would you refute that theory where you can’t right? What you do is you verify that theory you go out and you find big foot and Once you found him you put him in the zoo somewhere now you have verified the theory that big foot exists You can’t ever refute that theory now. That’s a that’s a silly example But let me give you a more realistic one that’s an actual scientific example And this this does come from popper himself in logic of scientific discovery He takes the theory that the element with atomic number 72, which is hafnium exists that theory How do you how do you refute that theory? Well strictly speaking you don’t right? What you do is you go find The element with atomic number 72 and by finding it and by verifying its existence you verify that theory So what’s going on here? Is this is this an example of where popper is wrong that science is about refutation and not verification It’s not so, you know spoiler I’m going to explain in a moment that that people are just misunderstanding popper on this But it’s important to realize that verification does play an important role inside of science
[00:21:56] Blue: Particularly in the case of tests we when you have a prediction You you don’t refute the prediction you verify the prediction So there’s something more going on here and as I’ve read popper more deeply I’ve come to understand he’s actually addressed all this. So these are pseudo problems. Let me emphasize that And yet I do want to put it out there This is a problem you should need to be able to understand right and build need to understand how popper resolved it Now penrose based on that last one Comes up with a challenge for popper. So roger penrose famous scientist He says in his book road to reality pages
[00:22:33] Blue: 1020 to 21 he says he’s challenging the idea of popper’s falsification And he says the theory of supersymmetry predicts super partners for all the observed fundamental particles of nature But none of these has so far been observed the reason they have not according to supersymmetry theorists Is that supersture supersymmetry breaking mechanisms of an unknown nature Caused the super partners to be so massive that the energies needed to create them are still beyond the scope of present day accelerators With increased energy capabilities and super partners might be found and a new landmark in the physical theory would thereby be achieved With important implications for the future But suppose that still no super partners are actually found would this disprove supersymmetry not at all It could and probably would be argued that there had simply been Too much optimism about the smallness of the degree of symmetry breaking and even higher energies would be needed to find the missing super partners So based on this penrose claims That he’s now shown that popper’s falsification is incorrect This can’t be the boundary the boundary between science and non -science can’t be Falsification because here we have something that’s an important part of science Important part of physics and yet it can only be verified very similar to my previous example But this is a stronger real -life example that is currently part of physics and currently is being dealt with Whereas we’ve discovered half the end at this point. Okay.
[00:23:58] Blue: Now sometimes best theories exist without refuting the competition So a man is murdered and his wife has a motive the police are going to start their investigation With the wife because they know she has a motive therefore making her a the best theory as to who committed the murder Compared to anyone else that they currently know about so the theory that someone else committed the murder is not refuted Like at all just because we happen to know the wife has a motive Yet the police rightly investigate the wife given that this is now their best explanation How do we fit this example with popper now if you’re a good pop pairing this one’s probably easy for you Okay, but let’s let’s put it out there as one of the things that we want to see get answered A similar one would be a dna test.
[00:24:41] Blue: Let’s say that so like a while back There was this whole thing about thomas jefferson had a slave You know did the children of that slave were they thomas jefferson’s and they did these dna tests And then there was a bunch of controversy around that they found that the markers from thomas jefferson’s DNA were found in the descendants So some people claim that proved that thomas jefferson had in fact Mated with his slave and so okay this Impinges his character and and then other people who are very pro thomas jefferson tried to defend and they said well Actually his brother lived in the same house or was around all the time and and he has you know Likely the same markers and okay, so you get this big discussion around this it’s conjection refutation process So let’s make up one that’s a little bit simpler but similar to that Let’s say that you have this dna marker and in the population in the general population It’s it’s only a one in ten thousand chance But it just so happens that the famous person that you’re wondering thomas jefferson or whoever Has it and so to the descendants of this woman who is the slave We know and for the second argument, let’s assume that there’s no no brother around There’s no other people around that we know of that could have that marker just based on probabilities Absent any other information? It really does seem like the best explanation now is that this person is the father now We don’t know that for sure.
[00:26:01] Blue: We haven’t really refuted the the opposite thing And there may be somebody else that lived in that town that Lived in that house maybe even that happened to have the marker and we just don’t know who it is Right and we don’t have a way of testing for it easily Absent any other information though. I think most people would say yeah Our best explanation is that this person is the father And I would agree. I think that is the best explanation even though we never actually refuted the competing theory Okay, now that I’ve gone through these problems. Let’s talk about the idea of popper without refutation, which is Really what led me down the path to getting answers to all these questions So now david doige in the logic of experimental test page eight He says in the absence of a good rival explanation an explanatory theory cannot be refuted by experiment Okay, boom right there. Thank you david doige. He’s completely correct He he has now answered one of the first questions. He’s agreeing with coon You cannot refute a theory based on an observational one at most it can be made problematic That’s the quote from david doige. Sorry. That’s not me saying that if only one good explanation is known and an experimental result Makes it problematic that can motivate a research program to replace it replace the theory or to replace the explanation Or to replace some other theory But so can a theoretical problem a philosophical problem a hunch or wish or anything Okay, so david so david doige is agreeing with coon. He’s agreeing with coon that you absolutely cannot Refute a theory by observation.
[00:27:31] Blue: Okay, which which I think is the right answer And I think that explains why nobody perceived newton being refuted by These anomalous observations, of course not and it’s precisely because of the dimquine thesis By the way, doige brings this up in his paper. He explains it’s because of the dimquine thesis It’s because the problem may exist in any part of the background knowledge And there’s no way up front with an observation alone to know which part. Um, sorry, was there a comment question?
[00:27:57] Red: Not so much a question I think specifically when we’re talking about newton and refuting newton We discussed this a long time ago. I think I think people are funny about newton I mean even now like the theory of relativity Really does challenge even now a lot of what newton says and people still accept That newton hasn’t been refuted like the And i’m not necessarily talking about within the science world But people believe newton was right and i’m just wondering specific to this if the strength of our collective like confidence in newton’s theory of gravity is part of why we It didn’t feel like he was being refuted just because Believe it to be true.
[00:28:50] Blue: That’s a great question. So first of all, let me say that when i’m talking to scientists And I say einstein refutes newton none of them will ever argue with me So amongst the scientific community, I don’t think there’s any doubt at all that newton is considered an incorrect theory I agree Now when i’m talking to philosophers, that is not true. Now, I’ve got problems with philosophers Honestly, I don’t particularly like philosophy my interest by philosophical interest in popper is a counter example to my general dislike of philosophy But from a certain point of view, I am a philosopher, right? I’m really interested in philosophy But i’m not really interested in the history of philosophy. I feel talking to people who are professional philosophers I feel like they’re mostly just confused And I find them more difficult to talk to than a regular person And I find that they have a hard time even understanding good reasonable arguments
[00:29:43] Red: I we we need to take that whole last statement and put quote marks around it and just have it be like
[00:29:50] Blue: the
[00:29:50] Red: theme for this
[00:29:54] Blue: And and obviously that’s not true of all philosophers I think called popper was obviously a philosopher that I respect a lot. David deutch He’s a scientist not a philosopher, but he’s really kind of more a philosopher in many ways And I he’s my favorite author and my favorite philosopher You could actually easily find lots of counter examples to what I just said, right? It would be easy to find philosophers that I like a lot because there really is good philosophy that happens Out there and they’ve played this really important role in the foundations of science and even play an important role today But the number of bad cases is so large and we’ll have to get into this and maybe some future Episode and I’ve talked to people who are students of philosophy They are one of the worst groups to try to talk to and to try to reason with and I I’m not telling you It’s because they know a lot. It’s not right. They are confused on many many many things And I’m not sure why that is I’m not sure why it is that a philosophy education In some sense makes you dumber and I don’t even know what to make of that as of today But let me having said all that and knowing that there’s some really good ones By the way, my friend Andrew Crenshaw Out on he’s a paparian out on facebook. I was talking with him about this I asked him about this. He gave me a very good answer.
[00:31:12] Blue: He says well Bruce, you know the truth and by the way, he’d be a good philosopher in my mind He says the truth is is that philosophy is just hard You know, I mean we’ve got these questions and we’re trying to ask them It’s hard to even figure out how to phrase the question in the first place And yeah, they’re the the spam to ham ratio is really bad But that’s what we would have expected right is and the the fact is it doesn’t matter that most of it’s bad The important thing is is that some of it’s good And that’s really really really the only thing that matters and it’s like, okay I totally agree with that answer. That is a very good answer.
[00:31:46] Red: Yeah, that’s a good answer
[00:31:48] Blue: Okay, so let me get back to your question though amongst Lame so amongst philosophers. I’ve had a philosopher an instrumentalist that I’m friends with I pointed out to him that Newton was refuted and he said no, it’s not and I said yes It is and he goes no Newton still is used because it’s got simpler calculations It’s just a matter of what it’s useful for and Newton is useful as long as you’re not near the speed of light As long as you’re not near a black hole or a large gravity large source of gravity Then Newton is a simpler set of formulas that gives you correct predictions and that’s all that matters Now as an instrumentalist, I would expect him to say that that really is a bad answer It’s not that anything in there is inaccurate because certainly we have kept Newton around as a good approximation of General relativity and we still use it.
[00:32:34] Blue: We know when to use it To use it as an approximation for general relativity However, the statement that Newton is an approximation general of general relativity is a false statement It’s only an approximation of general relativity in some circumstances And the way we know when to use it Instead of general relativity is by using general relativity general relativity is the superior theory It is the more accurate theory There is never a case where general general relativity is inferior in terms of its predictions to Newtonian physics And we have to use that greater knowledge that is embodied in general relativity To be able to know under what circumstances we can use Newton safely This is really the same as saying general relativity has greater verisimility This is the thing that he as an instrumentalist refused to acknowledge But it is the truth and that is the sense in which it’s refuted Okay, when we talk about refuted theories, maybe the word refutation is not the best word and that’s really where I’m going with this What we’re really talking about is that we know that general relativity is a better theory And it’s therefore closer to reality And that’s what matters in this case. Okay That is just a fact And a denial of that fact trying to deny it is to be wrong and that’s the problem Okay, now what about layman Why do layman like if I were to go and tell people the average layman even a fairly scientifically knowledgeable If I were to say, yeah, there is no such thing as the force of gravity. They would tell me I’m wrong They they would fight you to the death. Yes, they would
[00:34:12] Blue: Because gravity is often used by layman as an example of a scientific fact
[00:34:18] Red: It’s it it’s the one that we can see with our eyes, right? That’s it’s why newton resonates so much with people because you also have this pairing of The apple falling on his head and he recognized this Like there’s also this story that goes with it and it makes sense to us and it Reflects what we see in the universe really prettily.
[00:34:38] Blue: Yes No, it is not it is not the case though according to einstein’s theory. There is no force of gravity You know, it’s it’s actually just that we have this warp this curvature in space that warps as you have Greater amount of gravity and when you have when you have people moving parallel on a curve They come together and that feels like a force like it’s me and cameo started a mile apart Both aimed ourselves towards the north pole and then walked in parallel to each other We would eventually bump into each other and it would be like a magical force was pulling us together When in reality, it’s just the curvature of the world that we’re walking on. Okay, there’s no actual force there That’s what gravity actually is according to einstein’s theory. Now, you know, let’s keep in mind There’s no such thing as a final theory. Maybe quantum gravity will say something different Who knows but at least according to our best theory, there is no force of gravity And most people don’t realize that even though they’ve been taught general relativity in school And I think that cameos writes because it is just such a compelling viewpoint based on One’s own experience. There’s another reason why I think newton has a special Was traditionally always considered a special case and popper talks about this You have when newton newton in some ways Like if you were to say when did the scientific method get invented and popper would argue There’s no such thing as a scientific method, but you know what I mean When did science get invented? It’s really hard to say, right?
[00:36:04] Blue: Some people would point to gal leo something would point before gal leo Some people would point to newton But newton was a shock to many is you had gal leo developing this idea that you can use math and You know we should we should take seriously these theories and he develops a lot of the scientific ideas that get used by newton But when newton came out with this all encompassing theory that before newton They thought that the physics of the stars and the physics of the earth were entirely different things and they had different theories for them newton suddenly shows it’s the same thing He unified everything and not only that but we proceed to test out and corroborate newton’s theory for hundreds and hundreds of years Actually was more than that one was newton. He was a long time ago. So Very long time we have newton reigning supreme with not a single known counter example to it and during that time newton came to be accepted as the absolute god revealed truth about the world and Almost all philosophers saw him that way almost all scientists saw him that way and so einstein was a shock In fact, it was such a huge shock This this explains why you know the perihelion of mercury was not perceived as a counter example to newton They could not get through their heads newton is making a false prediction They could not accept that was even a possibility the more or less an experiment same thing, right?
[00:37:30] Blue: It really wasn’t until we had the eddington expedition where and now this is an example of where thomas kuhn is wrong thomas kuhn claims that you get anomalous observations and Scientists try to explain them away that part seems to be somewhat true and then eventually they collect and you have a crisis And only then do people go and try to find an alternative explanation That is not the case with general relativity. What really happened was einstein convinced people that his theory that that these problems were actually problems namely by coming up with an with a A better theory that made novel predictions No one had even guessed and then demonstrating that it that it could make these correct predictions counter to newton and only then did the crisis take place And and even then as we’ve discussed It took a long time For people to accept einstein’s theory. He did not win the Nobel prize for his theory He won it for the photoelectric effect instead and one of the past podcasts I said it was brownie emotion why I was wrong was the photoelectric effect They gave him a Nobel prize because they they knew he was important to science But they did not give it to him for general relativity because general relativity was considered controversial at the time Um, it took quite a while for the scientific community to realize and accept newton was wrong So do you do you think that ultimately that ends up contributing when When you have he brings there’s this they they observe this refuting Thing in the in nature Is that pardon me? It did take science a little while to accept that that newton was being refuted by Observation. Yes.
[00:39:14] Blue: Yes So now this is this is where we’re getting to with this quote from david doge Let me finish the quote He says but in any case the existence of a problem with a theory has little import besides as I said in forming research programs Unless both the new and old Panda are well explained by a rival theory in that case the problem becomes grounds for considering the problematic theory tentatively refuted This is from page 10 of this paper. Okay. So doge is saying that a refutation requires not just Anomalous observation or any number of anomalous observations, but also requires a second explanation Now this is actually a good answer now. We’re going to see there’s a little bit of a problem with Although it’s more of a linguistic problem.
[00:39:57] Blue: It’s not conceptually a problem Understand that sometimes you pick words and the words aren’t the best way to convey something But sometimes what you’re really saying is just accurate and this is really the case here Okay, under the doge understanding of the word refutation You do not refute something with an anomalous observation or any number of anomalous observations you do it with a combination of an anomalous observation or observations and a second explanation and This is not a bad way to think of the word refutation As we’re going to see it’s not the way popper thought of it But it is not a bad way to think of it and it gets at a fairly common understanding of the word refutation And so if we want to think of it that way this explains This is a really a pretty good answer to kun’s concern Right as you say well, no, it’s not that it’s not that an anomalous observation refutes a theory It’s that it it anomalous observation leads to a research program Which in turn with a second explanation refutes the theory This is probably and this wasn’t that really how newton’s theory got refuted was by the existence of both anomalous observations and a second theory I think this is a probably more accurate way to to talk about refutation now If this is the case though It really for many years because I was aware of the doom crime thesis Actually before deutch even had written his paper I had come to the end you can see this in my blog post Historically, I have blog posts that existed before deutch’s paper where I came out and I said we really have to see refutation Is only happening in a theory -to -theory comparison.
[00:41:29] Blue: So I had come up on my own Based largely on reading Thomas kuhn by the way not popper that you have to have a second theory to be able to refute a theory Now when I realized that and then that got a good source of backup on that when David deutch said the same thing in his His paper the logic experiments of tests But I was always really bothered by quotes from popper because popper just does not seem to agree with this So for example popper says in so far as scientific statements refer to the world experience They must be refutable and in so far as they are irrefutable They do not refer to the world experience Now, maybe that doesn’t sound that bad to you But if you really want to get technical that is a false statement if we’re looking at the word refutable in the deutchian sense Okay, because our refutation requires Anomalous observations plus a second theory to be able to say that Newton’s theory wasn’t scientific wasn’t a set of scientific statements until Einstein’s theory came along is just not true and This statement if I’m trying to read it with the deutchian version of refutation. It just does not make sense Okay, here’s another one. Can the assumption of the truth of test statements justify either the claim that a universal theory is true Or the claim that it is false to this problem.
[00:42:44] Blue: My answer is positive Yes, the assumption of the truth of test statements sometimes allows us to justify the claim That explanatory universal theory is false again No mention of the need for a second theory about this one as to falsification special rules must be introduced Which will determine under what conditions a system is to be regarded as falsified We say that a theory is falsified only if we have accepted basic statements Which is a test statement which contradict it a basic statement just to describe this a little bit Popper would never accept a single test So a basic statement would be a test that has been repeated by multiple people amongst the community So it’s it’s a it’s an actual What’s the term I’m looking for it’s an actual Thing that has been repeated. It’s it’s something that really does have to be explained You can’t just explain it away as I had a bad test case anymore So he’s saying yeah, basically you can refute a theory with tests alone.
[00:43:35] Blue: That’s what he’s saying here Okay, this is from logic of scientific discovery page 66 The other two were the open society in its enemies volume two page 13 and objective knowledge page seven If a reputation really requires a second explanation the above passages just have to be seen as not true And for many years I read popper as being wrong on these quotes And I thought really very seriously thought popper didn’t understand the concept of refutation correctly now I’m not the only person obviously that had problems with this with what popper was saying now obviously kuhn did Now here is victor gizbers of leading the university He has a series of youtube videos and in those he goes over the concept of falsification Falsification isn’t things like that and he says popper was wrong about the logic of falsification example And he gives us an example of a frog left in the freezer He says let’s say we have a theory that a frog left in the in a freezer will die Okay, then we come back in a week and the frog is still alive Have you refuted that theory and he points out that you haven’t because it might be that the um the freezer Is broken. It might be that uh someone came along saw the frog Took it out to save it and then snuck it back in just before you went to go check a week later To just to try to throw you off the trail and mess up your experiment It might be that it takes two weeks to kill a frog in a freezer and not a
[00:44:58] Red: one week
[00:44:59] Blue: Yeah, whatever right? I mean, it’s the the point being that the logic of falsification does not work If you understand it in the way that popper seems to be suggesting that you can through a single test statement Refute something and so he says philosophers of science nowadays are almost unanimous including that popper was in fact wrong Okay, now i’m going to go on a limb here I’m going to say what I’ve just explained is one of the main reasons why popper did not catch on Is because when you read popper when you read the statements like the ones I just quoted from her above They seem like they are obviously false and that it’s very easy to think of Counter examples to that and that I think this is one of the reasons why Popper is rejected by most philosophers certain aspects of him are actually quite popular amongst scientists Particularly the concept of falsification seems to have caught on quite strongly in science, although they understand it wrongly Which is unfortunate, but uh popper got largely overlooked because of this problem I’m going to make that claim I maybe i’m wrong, but that is what I think and i’m now giving you some examples of this Where this is clearly one of the main things that causes people to think they can prove popper wrong Okay, now I had a conversation with Danny Frederick who is a well known scholar popper who passed away recently and this was on facebook Now Danny Frederick. He was a kind of a funny guy So I started talking with him about the fact that refutations required a combination of a theory Sorry required a combination of anomalous observations Plus a second explanation.
[00:46:32] Blue: He says no, you’re wrong I’m like, uh, no didn’t coin you absolutely must have a second refute a second theory to build refuted theory He goes no and he says you’re confusing two things refutation and rejection of a theory I’m like, what do you mean by that? So he goes, okay, so rejection of a theory is where you actually Put the theory away and pick a new one because this isn’t popper’s term. By the way, this is my own term. He’s a famous scholar himself So this is his own Epistemology based on popper and terminology. Okay. He says that’s rejection of a theory. That’s an important concept popper Didn’t spend enough time on and didn’t have a word for So but that’s what I call it And you’re talking about rejection of a theory not refutation of a theory. I’m like, this doesn’t make sense Right. And so I start to argue with him and you know, he accuses me of mangling dutch He accuses me of just not understanding and all sorts of things take place And at some point quite a ways down the discussion it finally strikes me what he’s saying And I go, you know what? I think we’re actually saying the same thing I think we might be using different terms for the same concept. He goes, no, that’s not the case. I go Hold on. I think we are. I think we’re actually saying the same thing and we’ve been saying the same thing the whole time We’re just talking past each other. He’s like, no, that’s not the case I go, okay. I’ll tell you what
[00:47:48] Blue: I’ll tell you what How about something like really I think we’re saying the same thing, but you’re so insistent I think that it gives me pause. So how about I stick back for you? What it is your position is now that I’ve been talking with you a while. I believe I can do that I will state it and if I don’t get it right, I’ll correct it until you accept Set my summary of your point of view. He goes, okay So I make a big summary of his point of view, which by the way is available on my blog and I explain in detail what his view is Now when I I’ve done this with people numerous times never once has the person been willing to accept the summary on on the first try They always change something. So he found one word to change which in my opinion made no difference whatsoever But he found one word to change but he accepted absolutely the rest of the explanation So I changed the one word and then he bought off on it.
[00:48:41] Blue: And he said, yes, this is my opinion Here is what he was saying And this is actually very interesting and this and I’m really glad I had this conversation with Danny because This really changed the way I read pop and started answering a lot of these questions that I’ve been collecting these problems of refutation He said a refutation is a combination of the theory plus the background knowledge So yes, you can have a single observation that refutes a theory in fact a single observation that is anomalous Refutes a theory, but by theory we mean the whole theoretical system The theory in question Newton plus the background knowledge number of planets Whatever, it’s that combination that gets refuted when he explained that to me. I realized this is he’s using the word refutation To mean what deutch means by the word problem Okay, and I can’t I mean it’s it’s kind of a decent way to it’s not like it’s totally outside the bounds of how you might use the word refutation Words in real life have multiple meanings depending on context. This is just the truth about things, right? And you can see how if you’re talking about the whole combination of theories That a single observation really and truly always refutes the theoretical system There’s never a counter example if you don’t buy that try to give me a counter example
[00:50:00] Red: I I got you by it But
[00:50:04] Blue: if this is what the word refutation means to popper Then those statements that I was talking about from popper before all now make sense They are all correct statements now. So long as you understand He’s talking about the full theoretical system. Not the individual theory that we happen to care about. Okay Now, how does this change the way you look at popper? Okay, so just just just be kind of clear here Frederick uses the word refutation to mean a single observation or set of observations that cause a problem for a theory And dutch calls that a problem. Okay, then Danny, so then dutch refers to The the moment where you have the rival theory and it explains The problem you can now tentatively reject the previous theories. And that’s what dutch calls refutation. That’s what danie calls rejection Okay, so this led to first of all this led to an interesting idea Which is the whole idea of popper without refutation. You don’t need the word refutation We can actually say we can call the first first event a problem We can call the second event rejection and we can get rid of the word refutation altogether Now, why would I want to do this? Obviously, probably no one’s going to want to do this because the word refutation is so strongly associated with popper at this point culturally That it wouldn’t make sense to get word of the word refutation But it was eye -opening to me to realize I didn’t even need the word refutation that the word refutation Was causing a misunderstanding.
[00:51:37] Blue: It was leading to people Because we tend to think of the word refutation as being about the theory itself And not about the theoretical system the theory plus the background knowledge This is what’s leading to people misunderstanding popper. This is what’s causing people to reject popper wrongly Okay Now did popper really understand that it was the whole the full theoretical system. Danny was very insistent This was the case. So now that I knew what to look for I went out and I searched for Is this actually true or is Danny mistaken? Turns out he is right And here’s a quote from popper that comes from realism in the aim of science page 187 A more serious objection to my epistemology is closely connected to the problem of context and the fact that my criterion Of demarcation applies to systems of theories rather than to statements out of context This objection may be put as follows No single hypothesis is falsifiable Because every refutation of a conclusion may hit any single premise of the set of all premises used in deriving the refuted conclusion The attribution of falsity to some particular hypothesis That belongs to the set of premises is therefore risky Okay, notice that this is precisely what Danny Frederick was talking about. Okay. I mean like almost word for word So this doesn’t surprise me. David Deutsch is a scientist. I’m not a philosopher. I’m not a scientist or a philosopher I’m a layman. Danny Frederick is a well -known famous popper scholar So it’s not that surprising that Fredericks actually read all popper’s works.
[00:53:15] Blue: David Deutsch by his own admission hasn’t So he was more familiar with Um, what what the terminology of of popper is now this is a problem that exists with popper Is that first of all, he uses words somewhat idiosyncratically In fact, keep in mind that english was not his primary language He was german and his original version of his book logic of scientific discovery, which is the key Book that he wrote the only book that he wrote really the other books are collections of Papers and presentations and things like that. It was originally written in german and from what I understand reads better in german than it does in english He had to translate it. He translated himself He had to pick words that were the best words he could find in english to convey the ideas that he was trying to get across And this statement here about the system of theories I don’t know if there’s other places where he makes that clear But this is a super clear statement, but it’s in just one of his books You have to really have read popper widely to put together a lot of these things Because he doesn’t necessarily explain it in in each individual book, right?
[00:54:17] Blue: But this was very eye -opening for me Now let’s compare this with the dictionary definition of refutation and falsification I just googled these and it gives me a definition Here’s the definition for refutation the action of proving a statement or theory to be wrong or false falsification The action of falsifying information or a theory Okay, this is how people normally think of these words and it is not the way popper intended it That’s why people read it in that’s why people including myself including deutsch including very intelligent people Read popper and do not come away with the realization that when he’s talking about a refutation He’s talking about the whole theoretical system the theory plus the background knowledge. Okay Now let me also say I kind of left this out for the sake of brevity that popper then goes on from that previous quote to say it’s not really a problem And he gives a very good answer as to why right? It’s To put this kind of just straightforwardly There’s no issue here.
[00:55:21] Blue: The fact that you’re actually refuting the comp the combined system Isn’t a problem because the next step is to conjecture Which part of the system is wrong so if I get a refuting case in the case of jupiter So jupiter’s orbit Is off That is a refutation of the combination of newton’s theory plus the assumption that there’s only seven planets And and it properly refutes that common combined theory now in that case the problem wasn’t newton’s theory The problem was that there’s actually eight planets and we had missed a planet That is that is a good way to think of refutation That’s not necessarily a bad way of finding it But it is counter to the way people normally think of it And that’s why people misread popper and that’s why popper hasn’t caught on as well as he should To make matters worse Popper often leaves you with the impression that it’s just the theory itself that gets refuted So nason nathan osir off who’s another popper scholar In his paper addressing three popular philosophic myths about carl popper’s demarcation criteria The title there He says reading poppers the logic of scientific discovery would be sufficient for many people to arrive at the conclusion that falsifiability applies to Only two individual theories So he gives quotes from popper where he says it he says when you use get when you falsify a theory He always says a theory when he really means theoretical system So osir off says any use of the word theory in relation to popper’s falsifiability criteria should be understood as an elliptical expression for theoretical system This is from page 10 the first one was from page six of that paper So popper has largely done himself a disservice, right?
[00:57:07] Blue: He has written his book using terms that they’re not inaccurate You know, I can see why the word theory could mean theoretical system I can see why the word refutation could mean theory plus background knowledge, right? But that certainly isn’t the way people normally think of it Therefore people are bound to misread popper because of the way he’s currently learning things So here’s my here’s my proposal Now i’m not i’m not suggesting we actually do this when we’re talking amongst popperians, but when we’re talking to people who are outside You know poppers People who already know popper well I think the word refutation is a misleading term. I think what we really should call it as a counter example Okay, and verification is itself a misleading term I think it should be called a positive example or a positive instance Popper used the word criticism. So to popper a refutation is specifically a problem with an empirical theory So refutation is an actual observation statement a basic statement from an experiment Okay, or an observation that exists Where he would use the word criticism for the more general a more general problem.
[00:58:14] Blue: So a problem a philosophical Theory that has no empirical content Can’t have refutations because you can’t do experiments on it But it could have criticisms problems with it that are criticisms I think we should just call use the word problem for all of those And use counter examples specifically for a test case what popper calls a reputation If you change those things and the word conjecture need to change a little bit too popper would often speak of conjecture refutation as a Summary of his epistemology, which I am now claiming is it is misleading Instead we should probably call it problems and conjectured solutions Which has the nice addition to it that popper says we always start with problems So even though we always start with problems. He still called it conjecture and refutation It really should be refutation and conjecture problems and conjectured solutions So if we rethink a popper with just very small Change of wording. I actually think popper becomes a lot more understandable Now how might we thinking this language lead to answering some of the problems that we’ve talked about? That’s where i’m going to move on to next However, this might actually be a good place to stop we could like finish it up the next time if we won’t I think I think if you’re halfway through that this is a great time to stop Yeah So let me let me summarize just quickly since likely i’ll be releasing this On monday so that it’s available for when I do my presentation for the popper conference
[00:59:46] Blue: So I haven’t really solved the problems And I I want to go through and I want to demonstrate That now that i’m reading popper correctly It turns out all of these problems are really fairly easily solved that there really are no none of these are actual problems for popper But they were actually based on misunderstandings of reading popper And it was a bit of a shock to me that I had been miss reading popper for years I had been thinking he meant something by the word refutation and something by the word theory and I was wrong He actually meant something else And while I haven’t actually solved the problems yet, my guess is that you can start to make some guesses as to how this will Pull the thread that you know unravels the mystery and shows how to deal with each of the problems I’ve previously raised But as I went through starting to unravel this mystery what I did is I did a more close reading of popper I read read the logic of scientific discovery, which is his main book And he explains a lot of things in there that I think get missed And that’s what we’ll discuss next time. For instance, the next thing we will discuss is the asymmetry What is the asymmetry between refutation and verification? Let’s instead change that to say what’s the asymmetry between counter examples and positive examples When you understand it in that way, there is an asymmetry. It’s not what people think Right.
[01:01:08] Blue: It’s it’s largely misunderstood Um, as I said a lot a lot of people seem to understand it as the absolute verification fallacy Which is just wrong What popper actually lays it out as is as a logical asymmetry and that that’s very important to understand About popper is that this was all Based on his understanding of logic and how it applied to science And I think that’s why a lot of this misunderstanding happened because in the world of logic When you have a universal statement, which would be a for all statement for you know for all x Y is true.
[01:01:43] Blue: That’s a universal statement You that it is known in logic that you can quote only refute those you can’t verify them And then if you have an existential statement A statement like There exists, uh an x It’s well known that you can only verify those statements and you can’t refute them Now that is the correct terms in logic in logic You would use the word refutation when you’re talking about how you go about refuting a universal statement And you’d use the word verification for how you’d go about verifying an existential statement and What popper was really doing is he was taking those terms from logic and he was importing them into science Without quite noticing that in science they had slightly different connotations And I think that’s where the the real confusion comes from is that you have to realize this this difference where The asymmetry poppers interested in exists in the in the logic side And then he’s trying to reapply it into science, which is brilliant by the way It’s a work of genius now that I fully understand it But I can see now why he went with the word refutation even though it’s a little bit misleading But I do think counter examples of better word for it. So I’ll I’ll go ahead and stop there It’s a teaser for next time, but I’ll actually go into What popper actually said and I think that’s enlightening because it turns out popper actually explains himself pretty well If you if you take the time to read all his works and read his book in depth He does explain things.
[01:03:10] Blue: He’s even though he’s using words that are somewhat misleading at times He he does a fairly good job of clarifying himself It’s just that sometimes you have to know about the exact right passage To where he clarifies himself before you understand what his point was So
[01:03:25] Red: I think it’ll I think it’ll be interesting to see you Take all of this that we’ve talked about over the last hour and compress it into 15 minutes
[01:03:35] Blue: Yeah
[01:03:37] Red: First I mean I cannot wait to see how that works out. I also think you’re gonna get an absolute firestorm of Oh, yeah,
[01:03:47] Blue: so I thought about
[01:03:49] Red: You’re going in with a lightsaber and just like stabbing obi -wan can be all over and over again
[01:03:55] Blue: So let me let me say that I know that that’s true The fact that I’m even suggesting taking the word refutation out of popper Is bound to get me persecuted So I’m actually going to be soft walking it in in my actual presentation I’m not going to for example This is a much longer presentation than what I’m doing for my 15 minute presentation I have a different slide pack for the 15 minute presentation and it is only the popper without refutation Slides I’m not going to cover the problems of refutation I’m not going to cover what’s going to be in the next podcast that we’ll do in two weeks or whatever So I’m trying to get some visibility on this problem that people are misunderstanding popper because of this and that’s really my intent here Which is I think something the Paparians the critical rationalist community ought to be aware of right is that people are coming away with A poor understanding of popper’s epistemology Based on some of the choice of words we’ve used and I’m going to give other examples of that in the next time we do this I’m going to give other examples for example another teaser for next time Popperians will deny that you can strengthen the third That’s led to some popperians the Deutschians denying you can support a theory denying that you can corroborate a theory Which most popperians would say no you can support or corroborate a theory I think these all follow from the fact that To popperians the word strengthen a theory means something different than what your average layman means by that What is the intuitive understanding of strengthening the theory?
[01:05:31] Blue: Well, I don’t think it means what a popperian would read that as and I think that leads to incommensurability between Popperians and non -popperians talking because the popperian quickly bites the head of the other person off and says No, it’s impossible to strengthen the theory and the other person goes. No, I strengthen theories all the time Right and I got no really. I know I strengthen theories all the time. I know it can be done Right, so you can’t tell me it can’t be done and what they’re really doing is they’re talking past each other They’re they’re both right for the way they happen to be defining terms And I think there’s a number of those that exist and that have collected over time where Popperians have stopped speaking like normal people And that if they were to speak more like normal people it would be more understandable to to outsiders So that’s really what I’m going to be considering on and and that’s important to understand is that I don’t make any claims here That I am even improving upon poppers epistemology. All I am doing is clarifying his intent What choice of words he picked that might be misleading to some people And that’s it. That’s all I’m doing now At one point I thought I had discovered problems with popper. I no longer believe I have Right. I mean, I I believe popper addressed every single one of those problems that I I brought up Popper was awfully good at looking at criticisms of his theory and addressing it But I do think there’s no one good source you can go to where popper Explains his epistemology
[01:07:02] Blue: Straightforwardly where your average layman can get it and I do think that’s a bit of a problem All right We can uh wrap up here.
[01:07:10] Red: All right. Well, we know what we’re talking about next time, right?
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