Explain to me, in layman's terms if possible, why falsifiability is important and mandatory.
Because if something isn't falsifiable it can't be tested scientifically. If under no circumstances can your hypothesis be proven wrong, then it makes no concrete predictions, and therefore isn't science.
Some examples of such pseudoscience is psychoanalysis. It tries to explain some behaviors as suppressed subconscious urges which are denied by the person. As there's no way to possibly design an experiment where the psychoanalytic approach would be proven wrong (as every result would be interpreted as either the manifestation of the urge or its denial), psychoanalytic approach is not science. It's pseudo-science.
>>7690901
>why falsifiability is important and mandatory
It isn't. Stop reading popsci faggot
>>7691050
Idiot social science retard detected
>>7690983
Not OP but I have a similar question.
A scientific idea, no matter how well tested, can never be objectively true, correct?
>>7691120
philosophically so, yes
practically, there are some ideas that cannot be reasonably argued against. most of them are so trivial as to be meaningless though
>>7690983
Why can't I make predictions if my claim is not wrong under any circumstances? Lets say I claim "God exists" - why do I need to make predictions based on that?
>>7691120
>A scientific idea, no matter how well tested, can never be objectively true, correct?
Nope.
The point is: if a statement can't possibly be proven wrong, it can't be actually tested.
>>7691169
>Why can't I make predictions if my claim is not wrong under any circumstances? Lets say I claim "God exists" - why do I need to make predictions based on that?
Are you for real?
You're asking why making predictions about a claim is impossible, but then counter the idea by saying you don't need to make predictions.
...seriously?
I don't need to fly to the moon by flapping my arms.
It's also impossible.
The fact that "I don't need to" doesn't change the fact that it's impossible.
Your claim of God's existence can't be tested because there's no test that your claim could fail, and thus no "hurdle" for it to overcome.
It rests entirely on your claim that he exists, and nothing else.
>>7691089
Stop watching black science man and go learn some actually stuff.
Lol, I just read Popper's paper on this yesterday.
Basically what this anon said.
>>7690983
I also attended a talk on computer security recently that claimed much of the way security is done isn't falsifiable. As an example it used password requirements. The idea is that by requiring so many characters and what not then a person is less liable to have their password figured out. As to why this isn't falsifiable, the experiments are not practical. They could take decades to run and would require very large sample sizes. No attempt has ever been made at testing this claim.
So why is this bad? Many reasons, one of them is security creep. For instance, one day someone says your password is more secure if it uses UTF16 characters and suddenly that becomes the standard because it's unfalsifiable.
Anything unfalsifiable is irrelevant. Take the claim made in the previous sentence, for example. It's pretty unfalsifiable and also pretty irrelevant.
>>7691181
>It rests entirely on your claim that he exists, and nothing else.
besides innumerous observations.
>>7691209
It's easy to falsify tho. Observe:
Either God doesn't exist or he'll bless this post with quints.
>>7691229
>an infinite being of time and space would influence a post number on a Aztec sundial website
>>7691286
>An infinite being of time and space would influence anything at all at this level of existence
Even if he does than, for all intents and purposes, he might as well not.
Falsifiability is a silly concept that has been shown repeatedly not to apply to real life. I'm a cold atom physicist, and it doesn't even apply to a lot of good research in my field, which is one of the most experimentally rich fields of physics. It's a concept that is taught to undergraduates in h&p of science, and it occasionally pops up in popsci junk.
>>7691308
I don't see why it would even come up during normal science for a hard science. Surely people do not believe that experiments and analytical consequences of established scientific paradigms have to been individually judged for immediate falsifiability rather than the science as a whole. It's kind of a package deal.
Mathematical proofs are unfalsifiable by their nature, surely people do not think that these are improper.
>>7691324
Mathematics aren't a science you pleb. Mathematics is superior.
>>7691120
Technically, no. I think it was Stephen Gould who said:
"In science 'fact' can only mean 'confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional consent.'"
>>7691324
Mathematics is deductive, not empirical.
>>7691308
I'm a photonics physicist. Speak at any conference, you'll find a dozen people coming up to you afterwards asking about details of your experiment that are relevant to them.
Falsifiability is important, because otherwise we could all just ass pull and receive grants.
>>7690901
Popper explains quite clearly in his essay.
http://goodliffe.byu.edu/310/protect/popper.pdf
The basic idea is that it's not sufficient to find evidence in support of a theory in order to justify it. This is because it's possible to create theories that cannot be falsified like Freud or Adler's psychology theories.
>Every scenario you can come up with can not only be interpreted through their theories but it then becomes another piece of evidence in support of it.
>As said evidence accumulates it creates a self re-enforcing loop where new cases are immediately assessed by being compared to prior such pieces of evidence.
Moreover it's possible to create a self-healing mechanism into a theory so that no matter how you attempt to falsify it your case is just treated as an exception (case with Marx's theory of history and astrology).
Falsifiability was precisely an attempt at finding a criterion for separating pseudoscience from real science and through this creating a procedure for knowledge creation.
As soon as you throw out falsifiability you end up in a bad place philosophically. You're essentially saying "there is no need to test this theory because there is no evidence you can show me that will convince me it's wrong".
