I put it to you that Popperians would be almost unanimously supporting the first theory
As someone who actually knows many Popperians, and as one myself, I can tell you they would not be. The second theory sounds way better, as you describe it.
the way of thinking where you build up your position to match reality as closely as possible without worrying about criticisms of it, and especially without worrying about criticizing other positions, is anti-critical, and pro-truth.
But what if you’re making a mistake? Don’t we need criticism just in case your way of building up the truth has a mistake?
Popper fetish
I see that you do like one kind of criticism: ad-hominems.
if I have a correct thing, and your thing is incompatible with my thing, due to the nature of reality, your thing is wrong.
Logically, yes. But do you have a correct thing? What if you don’t. That’s why you need criticism. Because you’re fallible, and your methods are fallible too, and your choice of methods fallible yet again.
That is, Popperian philosophy is all about the social rules of belief: you are allowed to belief whatever you like, until it’s falsified, criticized, or refuted. It’s rude, impolite, gauche to continue believing something that’s falsified.
As a Popperian far more familiar with the Popperian community than you, let me tell you:
this is wrong. This is not what Popperians think, it’s not what Popper wrote, it’s not what Popperians do.
Where are you getting this nonsense? Now that I’ve told you it’s not what we’re about, will you reconsider and try to learn our actual views before you reject Popper?
As someone who actually knows many Popperians, and as one myself, I can tell you they would not be. The second theory sounds way better, as you describe it.
Can you tell me what process they would use to move over to the new theory? Do keep in mind that everyone started on the first theory—the second theory didn’t even exist around the time the first theory picked up momentum.
You come up with a criticism of the old theory, and an explanation of what the new theory is and how it does better (e.g. by solving the problem that was wrong with the old theory). And people are free the whole time to criticize either theory, and suggest new ones, as they see fit. If they see something wrong with the old one, but not the new one, they will change their minds.
But there is no criticism of the old theory! At least, no criticism that isn’t easily dismantled by proponents of the old theory. There is no problem that is wrong with the old theory!
This is not some thought experiment, either. This situation is actually happening, right now, with the Copenhagen and Many Worlds interpretations of quantum physics. Copenhagen has the clumsy ‘decoherence’, Many Worlds has the elegant, well, many worlds. The event that supports Many Worlds strongly but also supports Copenhagen weakly is the double-slit experiment.
Bad example. Decoherence is a phenomenon that exists in any interpretation of quantum mechanics, and is heavily used in MWI as a tool to explain when branches effectively no longer interact.
But the Copenhagen interpretation has no defense. It doesn’t even make sense.
Decoherence is a major concept in MWI. Maybe if you learned the arguments on both sides the situation would be clearer to you.
I think you’ve basically given up on the possibility of arguing reaching a conclusion, without even learning the views of both sides first. There are conclusive arguments to be found—on this topic and many others—and plenty of unanswered and unanswerable criticisms of Copenhagen.
Conclusive doesn’t mean infallible, but it does mean that it actually resolves the issue and doesn’t allow for:
easily dismantled by proponents of the old theory
The original statement was:
Now, one of these theories is a little older, a little more supported by scientists, a little clunkier, a little less parsimonious.
As someone who actually knows many Popperians, and as one myself, I can tell you they would not be. The second theory sounds way better, as you describe it.
But what if you’re making a mistake? Don’t we need criticism just in case your way of building up the truth has a mistake?
I see that you do like one kind of criticism: ad-hominems.
Logically, yes. But do you have a correct thing? What if you don’t. That’s why you need criticism. Because you’re fallible, and your methods are fallible too, and your choice of methods fallible yet again.
As a Popperian far more familiar with the Popperian community than you, let me tell you:
this is wrong. This is not what Popperians think, it’s not what Popper wrote, it’s not what Popperians do.
Where are you getting this nonsense? Now that I’ve told you it’s not what we’re about, will you reconsider and try to learn our actual views before you reject Popper?
Can you tell me what process they would use to move over to the new theory? Do keep in mind that everyone started on the first theory—the second theory didn’t even exist around the time the first theory picked up momentum.
You come up with a criticism of the old theory, and an explanation of what the new theory is and how it does better (e.g. by solving the problem that was wrong with the old theory). And people are free the whole time to criticize either theory, and suggest new ones, as they see fit. If they see something wrong with the old one, but not the new one, they will change their minds.
But there is no criticism of the old theory! At least, no criticism that isn’t easily dismantled by proponents of the old theory. There is no problem that is wrong with the old theory!
This is not some thought experiment, either. This situation is actually happening, right now, with the Copenhagen and Many Worlds interpretations of quantum physics. Copenhagen has the clumsy ‘decoherence’, Many Worlds has the elegant, well, many worlds. The event that supports Many Worlds strongly but also supports Copenhagen weakly is the double-slit experiment.
Bad example. Decoherence is a phenomenon that exists in any interpretation of quantum mechanics, and is heavily used in MWI as a tool to explain when branches effectively no longer interact.
I think he meant wave-form collapse.
But the Copenhagen interpretation has no defense. It doesn’t even make sense.
Decoherence is a major concept in MWI. Maybe if you learned the arguments on both sides the situation would be clearer to you.
I think you’ve basically given up on the possibility of arguing reaching a conclusion, without even learning the views of both sides first. There are conclusive arguments to be found—on this topic and many others—and plenty of unanswered and unanswerable criticisms of Copenhagen.
Conclusive doesn’t mean infallible, but it does mean that it actually resolves the issue and doesn’t allow for:
The original statement was:
Clunkier is a criticism.