I responded with truth trumps happiness and believing the dragon would force you to believe the false belief which is not worth the amount of happiness received by believing it
In the future, I hope you notice this sort of situation and respond by getting curious and engaging with the other person, rather than attempting to win the argument.
Today however Shminux pointed out to me that I held beliefs that were themselves non-falsifiable.
In fact, it’s rather worse :) The negation of an unfalsifiable belief is also unfalsifiable—you unfalsifiably believe that Carl’s garage does not have an immaterial dragon in it. Even if you make an observation, e.g. you throw a ball to measure the gravitational acceleration, you have an unfalsifiable belief that you have not just hallucinated the whole thing.
At some point you devolve into declaring all beliefs unfalsifiable, because of the unfalsifiable belief that you exist (what different observations would you expect to you didn’t exist?) and the complementary unfalsifiable belief that you don’t exist (suppose you existed; what observations would be different?)
In fact, it’s rather worse :) The negation of an unfalsifiable belief is also unfalsifiable—you unfalsifiably believe that Carl’s garage does not have an immaterial dragon in it. Even if you make an observation, e.g. you throw a ball to measure the gravitational acceleration, you have an unfalsifiable belief that you have not just hallucinated the whole thing.
As a general principle it would seem that the negation of an unfalsifiable belief is better then the falsifiable one. Meaning that the unfalsifiable belief has a much larger number of worlds in which it is true then the falsifiable one.
For example: There are many more possible ways that Carl does not have a immaterial dragon in his garage than possible ways that he does.
I think a good way to think about this meaning which unfalsifiable belief to hold is the evidence that brought it out of the original hypothesis space. In this way Timeless physics has a higher ratio of probability (p(timeless physics)/p(not timeless physics)) then an immaterial dragon.
However it is a warning flag to me when someone brings up that
you have an unfalsifiable belief that you have not just hallucinated the whole thing.
because of the negligible probability of this belief and giving it power in an argument would both be an example of Scope Insensitivity as well as preventing any useful work being done
Never the less it reminded me that i should be thinking in terms of probability to unfalsifiable beliefs rather then simply the fact that there unfalsifiable. maybe i should revise conjectures to unfalsifiable beliefs that are within a certain probability margin. say p=.8 to p=.2. I would still separate them from higher beliefs because simply labeling them with a probability is still not intuitive enough for myself not confuse them with scope insensitivity.
In the future, I hope you notice this sort of situation and respond by getting curious and engaging with the other person, rather than attempting to win the argument.
In fact, it’s rather worse :) The negation of an unfalsifiable belief is also unfalsifiable—you unfalsifiably believe that Carl’s garage does not have an immaterial dragon in it. Even if you make an observation, e.g. you throw a ball to measure the gravitational acceleration, you have an unfalsifiable belief that you have not just hallucinated the whole thing.
At some point you devolve into declaring all beliefs unfalsifiable, because of the unfalsifiable belief that you exist (what different observations would you expect to you didn’t exist?) and the complementary unfalsifiable belief that you don’t exist (suppose you existed; what observations would be different?)
As a general principle it would seem that the negation of an unfalsifiable belief is better then the falsifiable one. Meaning that the unfalsifiable belief has a much larger number of worlds in which it is true then the falsifiable one.
For example: There are many more possible ways that Carl does not have a immaterial dragon in his garage than possible ways that he does.
I think a good way to think about this meaning which unfalsifiable belief to hold is the evidence that brought it out of the original hypothesis space. In this way Timeless physics has a higher ratio of probability (p(timeless physics)/p(not timeless physics)) then an immaterial dragon.
However it is a warning flag to me when someone brings up that
because of the negligible probability of this belief and giving it power in an argument would both be an example of Scope Insensitivity as well as preventing any useful work being done
Never the less it reminded me that i should be thinking in terms of probability to unfalsifiable beliefs rather then simply the fact that there unfalsifiable. maybe i should revise conjectures to unfalsifiable beliefs that are within a certain probability margin. say p=.8 to p=.2. I would still separate them from higher beliefs because simply labeling them with a probability is still not intuitive enough for myself not confuse them with scope insensitivity.