Daniel Smith
Posts: 970
Joined: Sep. 2007
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| Quote (Reciprocating Bill @ Dec. 18 2008,10:01) | | Quote (Daniel Smith @ Dec. 18 2008,12:10) | | All of your characterizations fail to take into account the fact that it only takes one successful pathway to falsify my claim. |
Here I stated, | Quote | | Of course discovery of a natural path to OOL this Tuesday would show your assertion to be false. It generally follows that when an assertion is found to be untrue, it is false. BUT it does not follow that "a natural path to OOL can be discovered at any time" amounts to a test of your theory, and shows it to be falsifiable. |
Here I stated,
| Quote | | Of course, as before, such research may show you to be wrong at any time (perhaps on Tuesday). BUT that doesn't make that research a "falsification test" of your position, because your position generates no procedures and specifies no predicted observations that are unique to it. |
Obviously I expect that your position vis the likely future success of evolutionary science is false, expect that one day it will be shown to be false, and believe in the instance of many complex systems that it has already been shown to be false. Just as we see that your statement above is false.
In the quotes above you need to attend to the portions that follow "but..." It does not follow from the fact that you are making a likely false assertion about the future success of science that your position is "falsifiable" in any active, useful, scientific sense. Indeed, "falsifiable" is inappropriate here because your only "test" concerns the outcome of others' efforts, working from a framework quite contrary to your own, and does not arise from or "test" your theory at all. As you admit here:
| Quote | | Bill, you are correct in asserting that my (original) prediction requires no new methods. That's kinda the point. |
Why be shy? Not only does your "test" specify no new methods, its execution entails nothing more than you sitting in your armchair scratching your ass.
| Quote | | The fact that you are beginning to characterize such a falsification as impossible lends credence to my assertion. |
Beginning to?
BTW, I recently lost my watch. I don't know what the hell happened to it, although enough time has passed that it is unlikely to turn up. Still, I expect that there is a natural explanation for its disappearance. Most likely the band, which was in need of replacement, broke and it fell from my wrist unnoticed. But perhaps it was stolen, or I mislaid it. At this point it is unlikely that I'll ever know in any detail, beyond these conjectures, what happened to it.
My friend says that God took it. Took it right off my wrist and up to heaven (he thinks that's probably not a good sign for me). I found his explanation both ridiculous and worthless, but he insists that not only is his assertion testable, it is "falsifiable" and even scientific. He argues, "my theory would be falsified in a heartbeat if your watch turned up. So it is a scientific theory." He also insists that his explanation is better than mine: his theory is quite specific, while all I have is empty conjecture.
So my friend believes that my watch surfacing is the test of his theory. I asked how he intends to conduct that test. I asked him what his theory would prompt him to do that I'm not already doing: looking for my watch in ordinary places, consistent with the above natural conjectures. He admits: nothing at all. I asked him if his theory can, somehow, help me recover my watch, or at least learn what happened to it. He can't think of any way in which it can help, although he keeps repeating that he knows what happened to it, based upon his falsifiable, but unfalsified, theory. Every day that passes and my watch remains missing he asserts, "my confidence is growing that God took your watch. And this is empirically grounded confidence."
(My friend is an idiot, by the way.) |
Come on Bill,
A) you're pretending I have to either come up with some new way of doing science or actually falsify my own claim for it to be valid. Both of these are logically flawed arguments. If my claim can be falsified within the rigors of already established science, why must I invent some new method? And why must I be the one who falsifies my claim?
B) You say that you "believe" that my claim "in the instance of many complex systems ... has already been shown to be false". Yet you can't produce any evidence of this. This truly does qualify as a "belief" then doesn't it Bill?
C) You come up with an analogy that is completely unlike the present situation: One person loses his watch and another claims God took it. For this analogy to be even remotely accurate, everyone would have a lost watch and no one would have any way of explaining that loss. No one would have ever been able to recover a lost watch, and no one would know how such a recovery was done, but when research was conducted into the problem, it would be found that "watch recovery" was a complex problem with many intricately organized parts. Of course now the analogy just sounds foolish - and in fact it always was.
The bottom line Bill, is that my claim is simple and easily falsifiable without having to reinvent science. ALL SCIENCE HAS TO DO IS EXPLAIN HOW SOMETHING EVOLVED!!!
It should be easy - right Bill?? I mean you believe it's already been done. Maybe if you try closing your eyes and visualizing it, a solution will pop into your head and you'll be able to show me these "many complex systems" for which the explanation already exists!
Maybe chanting would help?
"Evotard, Evotard, Evotard, Evotard, Evotard, Evotard, Evotard, Evotard, Evotard, Evotard, Evotard, Evotard..."
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"If we all worked on the assumption that what is accepted as true is really true, there would be little hope of advance." Orville Wright
"The presence or absence of a creative super-intelligence is unequivocally a scientific question." Richard Dawkins
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