Qiaochu_Yuan comments on Falsifiable and non-Falsifiable Ideas

[Qiaochu_Yuan]

I still don’t see how anything you’ve said about Einstein is relevant to the original question I asked, which was for an example of a belief that you thought was beautiful, non-falsifiable, and worth holding.

I think it is a good thing most people do not optimize for truth because if it were so I don’t think the resulting world would be awesome. It would be a world where many people were less happy even though it would also probably be a world with more scientific advances.

Cool. So we agree now that truth does not trump awesomeness? (Somewhat tangential comment: science is not the only way to seek out truth. I also have in mind things like finding out whether you were adopted.)

[shaih]

You’re right Einstien was not relevant to your original question. I brought him up because I did not understand the question until

I think you’ve lost track of why we were talking about Einstein. In the original post, you listed two reasons to believe non-falsifiable things. I asked you to give an example of the first one. Maybe it wasn’t sufficiently clear that I was asking for an example which wasn’t falsifiable, in which case I apologize, but I was (after all, that’s why it came up in the first place). Relativity is falsifiable. A heuristic that beautiful things tend to be true is also falsifiable.

Thanks for leading me to the conclusion truth does not trump awesomeness and yes I now agree with this.

I also have in mind things like finding out whether you were adopted

Good point