If pigs start to fly, that doesn’t support the Humeiform theory—it just undermines (some of) its competitors. Being as the Humeiform theory predicts absolutely nothing, it can’t possibly be a better predictor than any theory which predicts anything at all correctly. The only way it can win is if no theory can do so—in which case it, being the simplest, wins by default.
No. We talked about evidential support, not predictive power.
Inhabitants of a Hume world are obviously right to explain flying pigs et al. by a hume-world-theory, even if they cannot predict anything.
Evidential support is directly tied to predictive power. That’s what it means to be supported by the evidence—that it predicted the evidence over the alternatives.
Explanations are directly tied to predictive power. That’s what it means to explain things—that those things are predicted to occur instead of the alternatives.
This is really, really basic stuff—dating back at least to Karl Popper’s falsifiability, if not further. If you don’t know it, you have a long way to go before you can reasonably consider trying to calculate the fundamental nature of the universe.
I’m not giving up yet—I’m fairly sure spuckblase is smart, he just doesn’t have a good background in the philosophy of science, much less Bayes’ Theorem. In any case, if I’m being perfectly frank, karma is not my motive.
In all unseriousness, you’re new to the community and have already linked to tvtropes, XKCD, and EY’s old posts. If you’re not out for karma, I don’t know what you’re playing at.
Nah, he was around on OB. His post on the welcome thread explains all (well, not all, but it’s consistent with his posting history and claimed motivation).
What Cyan said (look for comments under the name “Robin_Z”—those are me, probably). Also, I’ve been an Internet dork since before TV Tropes existed—I’ve got at least three ranks in “Computer Use: Internet Forumite”, a high-speed Internet connection over a wireless network both at school and at home, and a buttload of bookmarks primed to throw at almost any situation.
(Also, I’m in that early stage of Internet site usage where I obsessively follow every new comment and blog post to the community, which explains the high comment rate.)
Thanks but no thanks. I do know this really really basic stuff—I just don’t agree. Instead of just postulating that all explanations have to be tied to prediction, why don’t you try to rebut the argument. Again: Inhabitants of a Hume world are right to explain their world with this Hume-world theory. They just happen to live in a world where no prediction is possible. So explanation should be conceived independently of prediction. Not every explanation needs to be tied to prediction.
Inhabitants of a Hume world are right to explain their world with this Hume-world theory. They just happen to live in a world where no prediction is possible.
Just because what you believe happens to be true, doesn’t mean you’re right to believe it. If I walk up to a roulette wheel, certain that the ball will land on black, and it does—then I still wasn’t right to believe it would.
Hypothetical Hume-worlders, like us, do not have the luxury of access to reality’s “source code”: they have not been informed that they exist in a hypothetical Hume-world, any more than we can know the “true nature” of our world. Their Hume-world theory, like yours, cannot be based on reading reality’s source code; the only way to justify Hume-world theory is by demonstrating that it makes accurate predictions.
Arguably, it does make at least one prediction: that any causal model of reality will eventually break down. This prediction, to put it mildly, does not hold up well to our investigation of our universe.
Alternatively, you could assert that if all possibilities are randomly realized, we might (with infinitesimal probability) be living in a world that just happened to exactly resemble a causal world. But without evidence to support such a belief, you would not be right to believe it, even if it turns out to be true. Not to mention that, as others have mentioned in this thread, unfalsifiable theories are a waste of valuable mental real estate.
If pigs start to fly, that doesn’t support the Humeiform theory—it just undermines (some of) its competitors. Being as the Humeiform theory predicts absolutely nothing, it can’t possibly be a better predictor than any theory which predicts anything at all correctly. The only way it can win is if no theory can do so—in which case it, being the simplest, wins by default.
No. We talked about evidential support, not predictive power. Inhabitants of a Hume world are obviously right to explain flying pigs et al. by a hume-world-theory, even if they cannot predict anything.
Err, wrong.
Evidential support is directly tied to predictive power. That’s what it means to be supported by the evidence—that it predicted the evidence over the alternatives.
Explanations are directly tied to predictive power. That’s what it means to explain things—that those things are predicted to occur instead of the alternatives.
This is really, really basic stuff—dating back at least to Karl Popper’s falsifiability, if not further. If you don’t know it, you have a long way to go before you can reasonably consider trying to calculate the fundamental nature of the universe.
I know arguing against this fellow is like minting karma, but is it really getting anywhere?
I’m not giving up yet—I’m fairly sure spuckblase is smart, he just doesn’t have a good background in the philosophy of science, much less Bayes’ Theorem. In any case, if I’m being perfectly frank, karma is not my motive.
In all unseriousness, you’re new to the community and have already linked to tvtropes, XKCD, and EY’s old posts. If you’re not out for karma, I don’t know what you’re playing at.
Nah, he was around on OB. His post on the welcome thread explains all (well, not all, but it’s consistent with his posting history and claimed motivation).
What Cyan said (look for comments under the name “Robin_Z”—those are me, probably). Also, I’ve been an Internet dork since before TV Tropes existed—I’ve got at least three ranks in “Computer Use: Internet Forumite”, a high-speed Internet connection over a wireless network both at school and at home, and a buttload of bookmarks primed to throw at almost any situation.
(Also, I’m in that early stage of Internet site usage where I obsessively follow every new comment and blog post to the community, which explains the high comment rate.)
Thanks but no thanks. I do know this really really basic stuff—I just don’t agree. Instead of just postulating that all explanations have to be tied to prediction, why don’t you try to rebut the argument. Again: Inhabitants of a Hume world are right to explain their world with this Hume-world theory. They just happen to live in a world where no prediction is possible. So explanation should be conceived independently of prediction. Not every explanation needs to be tied to prediction.
Just because what you believe happens to be true, doesn’t mean you’re right to believe it. If I walk up to a roulette wheel, certain that the ball will land on black, and it does—then I still wasn’t right to believe it would.
Hypothetical Hume-worlders, like us, do not have the luxury of access to reality’s “source code”: they have not been informed that they exist in a hypothetical Hume-world, any more than we can know the “true nature” of our world. Their Hume-world theory, like yours, cannot be based on reading reality’s source code; the only way to justify Hume-world theory is by demonstrating that it makes accurate predictions.
Arguably, it does make at least one prediction: that any causal model of reality will eventually break down. This prediction, to put it mildly, does not hold up well to our investigation of our universe.
Alternatively, you could assert that if all possibilities are randomly realized, we might (with infinitesimal probability) be living in a world that just happened to exactly resemble a causal world. But without evidence to support such a belief, you would not be right to believe it, even if it turns out to be true. Not to mention that, as others have mentioned in this thread, unfalsifiable theories are a waste of valuable mental real estate.