We have better than the caricature of Popper that people invoke when they talk about falsification. The real Popper did not center falsification as the singular litmus test for the validity of a theory. He thought that scientific theories were theories that could in principle be falsified, which is a narrow claim. And he thought that in practice corroboration was a perfectly good reason to prefer one theory over another. Kuhn thought that falsification might be a great principle in theory, but that's not how science actually develops in real life.
Structural realism is the current outlook that reconciles revolutionary and cumulative science.
When it comes to Popper, all you need to do is look at how major discoveries (Nobel Prize winning discoveries) are made. For the most part, they’re made with new tools / technology and observation, not falsification of theories.
Check out The Engine of Scientific Discovery by Alexander Krauss.
I wouldn't agree fully. We have a very strict and outdated bias against pure theoretical investigations in natural sciences. There are just much more experimentalists with their knowledge of the field than us - theoretical guys - which works are not well regarded unlist proven experimentally.
Edit. Thank you for your addition in literature. I will check it out.
I mean we do our own scientific discoveries and publish it in our specialized journals using our specific theoretical language. However, to publish in a really good journal we need much more than just a good new theory.
Falsificationism is not even common feature of all sciences, it can only split them to sciences which Popper liked and not. For example, math, botany, Marxism and psychoanalysis were excluded.
Botany is not natural?
Or "natural" is just a synonym for "not liked by Popper"? Or may be botany like simple but massive array of data what/where grows need some falsification scheme to be useful?
Yeah, while old botanics is certainly a part of natural sciences (in terms of "natural"), I truly agree with Popper here as just Metadata not enough to be scientific system. System must have connections
Nobody actually works under falsificationism in practise. I still think it provides a powerful rule of thumb for rejecting pseudoscientific theories, which Popper himself argued.
Actually I would argue a Bayesian science is even worse in practise. How the hell do we ascribe probabilities to most scientific questions? We don’t. We just test and observe and try to build a cohesive theory. This is how every scientist works.
Well the argument replaces significance testing with subjective degrees of belief. Every scientist will arive at a different conclusion. Some will be more accurate than others, but certainty is unknowable.
Your interpretation of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle is incorrect: it has nothing to do with measurement at all, but is a statement about any quantum state (you don’t have to collapse the wavefunction for the uncertainty principle to apply to a unitarily evolving state). This is how it is explained sometimes even in textbooks, but those explanations are simply incorrect.
Yup, I’m telling you this explanation is at best misleading if not wrong. The correct understanding of the principle is the exact opposite of what you said: it applies to particles without measurements. Measurement has got nothing to do with the uncertainty principle.
The uncertainty principle is a mathematical result of waves, it doesn't imply particles are waves it implies that they cannot be measured with infinite precision. You're making the mind projection fallacy by attributing the lack of measurability to a physical lack of determinacy. Uncertainty Principle -- Fourier Transform
Again it has nothing to do with measurement. Don’t take my word for it: here is an experiment that shows that this “measurement” version of the uncertainty principle is in fact violated: https://arxiv.org/abs/1208.0034. This has nothing to do with our modern understanding of the uncertainty principle though, which again, has nothing to do with measurement.
I don't buy that they were able to not disturb an electron with a weak measurement, but even assuming they could do that they still cannot find position and momentum with certainty because of the fourier transform used for measuring by using light waves or other kinds (like sonar or radar) to measure with. Even if there were no change in momentum, even an airplane cannot be measured with certainty for both position and momentum.
The fact that non-measursment double slit experiments produce an interference pattern over repeated trials does not imply that these particles are waves, they may in fact ride pilot waves, and because of the uncertainty principle you cannot disprove me just as much as I cannot prove to you that it is the case.
u/eldahaiya is exactly correct and you are incorrect OP. Sorry. The pages you have reproduced here are not describing Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. They are describing the Observer Effect, which is veryoften confused with the Uncertainty Principle. They are cousins but they are not the same thing. Heisenberg's uncertainty principle is absolutely not epistemic. That is one of its most famous aspects. When you confine a wave spatially, you necessarily introduce additional superposed wavelengths whose momentum can only be predicted as a probability distribution via the Born rule. This is at the very heart of QM and if you're interested in this subject this is an important thing to get a clear grasp on. I highly recommend Sean Carroll's Biggest Ideas in the Universe series. It will take you all the way through physics up through QM and if you don't want to buy the books, he put the full lecture series online for free. You can watch the whole thing starting here, or just watch Quanta & Fields here.
And sorry to pile on, but I must add that even if it were true that Heisenberg was epistemic, your argument doesn't make sense.
First, it is immediately self-undermining. If Heisenberg is not fundamental but epistemic, that would be an argument against Bayesianism — if Heisenberg is epistemic, then the truth is out there, we just don't know it yet.
Second, even if I were wrong about everything I've said, this argument would still not work because it's a category error. Expressions of belief in one thing or another are not universally governed by the Heisenberg uncertainty principle any more than they are by the magnetic moment of the electron or the mass of the Higgs or any other fundamental feature of the universe. In fact I feel pretty confident that the only thing the Heisenberg uncertainty principle requires us to be uncertain about are the simultaneous position and momentum of a particle.
You cannot prove that a particle is a wave to begin with, you are making that assumption as your premise -- which is itself unjustified and is the mind projection fallacy.
This is not a category error because this is the "participatory realism" of QBism. The uncertainty principle secures participatory realism, by blocking certainty elements of reality are out of reach for any objective third party observer. To quote Jaynes, "quantum theory is '[a] peculiar mixture describing in part realities of Nature, in part incomplete human information about Nature—all scrambled up by Heisenberg and Bohr into an omelette that nobody has seen how to unscramble.'"
Oh I see — you are perhaps a bit of a crackpot. My mistake I should not have taken you seriously and given you a serious answer. Best of luck. Have a nice day.
>Just because something can't be proved (or disproved), with certainty, doesn't mean it isn't true.
Yes. Welcome to science.
But what does this have to do with "Falsificationism"? That merely states that a claim is scientifically valuable only if it can be falsified. It says nothing about proving things for certain.
>Thus, we must embrace uncertainty as epistemic and embrace uncertainty whole-heartedly in science with Bayesian inductivism as a replacement for falsifiability.
We can't do that because those are different things.
>Hiesenberg's uncertainty principle makes this clear, the principle regards uncertainty in measurement not indeterminateness
Not really. Despite the name, it doesn't really talk about uncertainty at all, it's about pair precision limit. It states that there is a limit to how precisely certain pairs of physical properties of quantum particles can be known simultaneously.
>fundamentally limits the power of falsifiability
It in no way does that.
>without certainty, you can not disprove.
Heisenberg's uncertainty principle does not say that we cannot know anything for certain.
The principle says we cannot know anything for certain because we cannot measure with certainty, or without error. Therefore it is epistemically impossible to be certain. Epistemologists have already known this for at least 10 years now. Without certainty, you cannot falsify anything.
Pilot wave and non-local universe it is /s Although, it's yet another interpretation while uncertainty principle Is a more general natural laws for congugated variables.
I think there is one total WF for the Universe. The "collapse" we observe is a not well-defined separation of the local WF from the global one which can give all these epistemic problems with the interpretations of QM theory. Global WF just somehow (unitary?) evolves in time and we just a part of this evolution. Do we need an master pilot equation to govern it? Idk, looks like another imaginary degree of freedom to make the math mathing.
I am well enough that QM predictions can somewhat predict the outcome of the experiments.
Well time needs to be related to gravity, so I'm also against absolute time. We already know absolute time is wrong. In fact I think this is the key to finding the right pilot waves, something to do with the curvature of space due to gravity.
Not the point but a good addition. With no unified theory, I cannot tell you by which total Hamiltonian we evolve. Anyway, the point that various QM interpretations arises due to false assumption of separability is my bread to go. Thus, the best interpretation of QM for now: "get the fůcking numbers in the Computer, Sinji!"
DataMonster01 | 16 hours ago
You’re entering an ongoing conversation in the philosophy of science without really understanding that conversation.
DataMonster01 | 16 hours ago
Falsification was rejected as a descriptor of scientific progress a long time ago.
Unusual_Candle_4252 | 15 hours ago
I missed it. We have something better than Popper and Kunh for natural sciences?
reddituserperson1122 | 15 hours ago
We have better than the caricature of Popper that people invoke when they talk about falsification. The real Popper did not center falsification as the singular litmus test for the validity of a theory. He thought that scientific theories were theories that could in principle be falsified, which is a narrow claim. And he thought that in practice corroboration was a perfectly good reason to prefer one theory over another. Kuhn thought that falsification might be a great principle in theory, but that's not how science actually develops in real life.
DataMonster01 | 15 hours ago
Structural realism is the current outlook that reconciles revolutionary and cumulative science.
When it comes to Popper, all you need to do is look at how major discoveries (Nobel Prize winning discoveries) are made. For the most part, they’re made with new tools / technology and observation, not falsification of theories.
Check out The Engine of Scientific Discovery by Alexander Krauss.
Unusual_Candle_4252 | 15 hours ago
I wouldn't agree fully. We have a very strict and outdated bias against pure theoretical investigations in natural sciences. There are just much more experimentalists with their knowledge of the field than us - theoretical guys - which works are not well regarded unlist proven experimentally.
Edit. Thank you for your addition in literature. I will check it out.
DataMonster01 | 15 hours ago
That may be true. But if you look at Nobel Prize winning discoveries, they’re almost all discovered through new tools or methods.
Unusual_Candle_4252 | 15 hours ago
I disregarded exactly this. Scientific community loves experiments, no one loves theory enough.
DataMonster01 | 14 hours ago
I agree, but I think appreciation of theory and its role in the mechanics of scientific discovery are two different things.
Unusual_Candle_4252 | 14 hours ago
I mean we do our own scientific discoveries and publish it in our specialized journals using our specific theoretical language. However, to publish in a really good journal we need much more than just a good new theory.
Optimal-Fig-6687 | 4 hours ago
superconductors theory - 2 x Nobel
Unusual_Candle_4252 | 4 hours ago
Yep, precisely proving my point.
Optimal-Fig-6687 | 4 hours ago
Why? Among Nobel's related to superconductors there are several experimental and several theoretical.
Unusual_Candle_4252 | 4 hours ago
I meant the ratio of Nobels for pure theory vs experimental works (including mixed theory+experiment) in total.
Optimal-Fig-6687 | 4 hours ago
Probably the specific methodologies of specific sciences.
Unusual_Candle_4252 | 4 hours ago
Which are indirectly reconstructed by Popper and Künh, I would say simplified
Optimal-Fig-6687 | 4 hours ago
I'm not sure.
Unusual_Candle_4252 | 4 hours ago
For sure. I had better to say something like "inspired and reduced to one somewhat common feature".
Optimal-Fig-6687 | 4 hours ago
Falsificationism is not even common feature of all sciences, it can only split them to sciences which Popper liked and not. For example, math, botany, Marxism and psychoanalysis were excluded.
Unusual_Candle_4252 | 4 hours ago
That's why I initially outlined "natural sciences" but had to be more precise. I respect your pedanticy, nevertheless.
Optimal-Fig-6687 | 4 hours ago
Botany is not natural?
Or "natural" is just a synonym for "not liked by Popper"? Or may be botany like simple but massive array of data what/where grows need some falsification scheme to be useful?
Unusual_Candle_4252 | 4 hours ago
Yeah, while old botanics is certainly a part of natural sciences (in terms of "natural"), I truly agree with Popper here as just Metadata not enough to be scientific system. System must have connections
DataMonster01 | 4 hours ago
I’m not an expert on demarcation, but math and Marxism are generally not considered sciences
Optimal-Fig-6687 | 4 hours ago
By whom are they not being considered?
DataMonster01 | 4 hours ago
Other scientists
ManaGedd | 17 hours ago
Nobody actually works under falsificationism in practise. I still think it provides a powerful rule of thumb for rejecting pseudoscientific theories, which Popper himself argued.
Actually I would argue a Bayesian science is even worse in practise. How the hell do we ascribe probabilities to most scientific questions? We don’t. We just test and observe and try to build a cohesive theory. This is how every scientist works.
[OP] Novel_Arugula6548 | 16 hours ago
Well the argument replaces significance testing with subjective degrees of belief. Every scientist will arive at a different conclusion. Some will be more accurate than others, but certainty is unknowable.
eldahaiya | 17 hours ago
Your interpretation of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle is incorrect: it has nothing to do with measurement at all, but is a statement about any quantum state (you don’t have to collapse the wavefunction for the uncertainty principle to apply to a unitarily evolving state). This is how it is explained sometimes even in textbooks, but those explanations are simply incorrect.
[OP] Novel_Arugula6548 | 17 hours ago
That's incorrect.
https://preview.redd.it/1nihw4jniduh1.png?width=1080&format=png&auto=webp&s=2b29e35c00f1242e1d40920eaaaa79f972fd1ad2
eldahaiya | 16 hours ago
Yup, I’m telling you this explanation is at best misleading if not wrong. The correct understanding of the principle is the exact opposite of what you said: it applies to particles without measurements. Measurement has got nothing to do with the uncertainty principle.
[OP] Novel_Arugula6548 | 16 hours ago
The uncertainty principle is a mathematical result of waves, it doesn't imply particles are waves it implies that they cannot be measured with infinite precision. You're making the mind projection fallacy by attributing the lack of measurability to a physical lack of determinacy. Uncertainty Principle -- Fourier Transform
eldahaiya | 16 hours ago
Again it has nothing to do with measurement. Don’t take my word for it: here is an experiment that shows that this “measurement” version of the uncertainty principle is in fact violated: https://arxiv.org/abs/1208.0034. This has nothing to do with our modern understanding of the uncertainty principle though, which again, has nothing to do with measurement.
[OP] Novel_Arugula6548 | 15 hours ago
I don't buy that they were able to not disturb an electron with a weak measurement, but even assuming they could do that they still cannot find position and momentum with certainty because of the fourier transform used for measuring by using light waves or other kinds (like sonar or radar) to measure with. Even if there were no change in momentum, even an airplane cannot be measured with certainty for both position and momentum.
The fact that non-measursment double slit experiments produce an interference pattern over repeated trials does not imply that these particles are waves, they may in fact ride pilot waves, and because of the uncertainty principle you cannot disprove me just as much as I cannot prove to you that it is the case.
In other words, uncertanties are epistemic.
eldahaiya | 10 hours ago
I’m not sure what brand of philosophy of science corresponds to dismissing a peer reviewed paper because of vibes.
reddituserperson1122 | 15 hours ago
u/eldahaiya is exactly correct and you are incorrect OP. Sorry. The pages you have reproduced here are not describing Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. They are describing the Observer Effect, which is very often confused with the Uncertainty Principle. They are cousins but they are not the same thing. Heisenberg's uncertainty principle is absolutely not epistemic. That is one of its most famous aspects. When you confine a wave spatially, you necessarily introduce additional superposed wavelengths whose momentum can only be predicted as a probability distribution via the Born rule. This is at the very heart of QM and if you're interested in this subject this is an important thing to get a clear grasp on. I highly recommend Sean Carroll's Biggest Ideas in the Universe series. It will take you all the way through physics up through QM and if you don't want to buy the books, he put the full lecture series online for free. You can watch the whole thing starting here, or just watch Quanta & Fields here.
And sorry to pile on, but I must add that even if it were true that Heisenberg was epistemic, your argument doesn't make sense.
First, it is immediately self-undermining. If Heisenberg is not fundamental but epistemic, that would be an argument against Bayesianism — if Heisenberg is epistemic, then the truth is out there, we just don't know it yet.
Second, even if I were wrong about everything I've said, this argument would still not work because it's a category error. Expressions of belief in one thing or another are not universally governed by the Heisenberg uncertainty principle any more than they are by the magnetic moment of the electron or the mass of the Higgs or any other fundamental feature of the universe. In fact I feel pretty confident that the only thing the Heisenberg uncertainty principle requires us to be uncertain about are the simultaneous position and momentum of a particle.
[OP] Novel_Arugula6548 | 15 hours ago
You cannot prove that a particle is a wave to begin with, you are making that assumption as your premise -- which is itself unjustified and is the mind projection fallacy.
This is not a category error because this is the "participatory realism" of QBism. The uncertainty principle secures participatory realism, by blocking certainty elements of reality are out of reach for any objective third party observer. To quote Jaynes, "quantum theory is '[a] peculiar mixture describing in part realities of Nature, in part incomplete human information about Nature—all scrambled up by Heisenberg and Bohr into an omelette that nobody has seen how to unscramble.'"
reddituserperson1122 | 15 hours ago
Oh I see — you are perhaps a bit of a crackpot. My mistake I should not have taken you seriously and given you a serious answer. Best of luck. Have a nice day.
[OP] Novel_Arugula6548 | 15 hours ago
If you think QBism and Jaynes are crackpots, then you're not worth talking to anyway.
redballooon | 16 hours ago
Referring to Goedels Incompleteness theorem would be a better introduction to the topic but what's the point?
Optimal-Fig-6687 | 4 hours ago
It's better to go directly to Hitler
redballooon | 36 minutes ago
Goedel, not Goebbel
RespectWest7116 | 10 hours ago
>Falsificationism is a mind projection fallacy.
Well, if you say so.
>Just because something can't be proved (or disproved), with certainty, doesn't mean it isn't true.
Yes. Welcome to science.
But what does this have to do with "Falsificationism"? That merely states that a claim is scientifically valuable only if it can be falsified. It says nothing about proving things for certain.
>Thus, we must embrace uncertainty as epistemic and embrace uncertainty whole-heartedly in science with Bayesian inductivism as a replacement for falsifiability.
We can't do that because those are different things.
>Hiesenberg's uncertainty principle makes this clear, the principle regards uncertainty in measurement not indeterminateness
Not really. Despite the name, it doesn't really talk about uncertainty at all, it's about pair precision limit. It states that there is a limit to how precisely certain pairs of physical properties of quantum particles can be known simultaneously.
>fundamentally limits the power of falsifiability
It in no way does that.
>without certainty, you can not disprove.
Heisenberg's uncertainty principle does not say that we cannot know anything for certain.
[OP] Novel_Arugula6548 | 3 hours ago
The principle says we cannot know anything for certain because we cannot measure with certainty, or without error. Therefore it is epistemically impossible to be certain. Epistemologists have already known this for at least 10 years now. Without certainty, you cannot falsify anything.
mirh | 2 hours ago
> Just because something can't be proved (or disproved), with certainty, doesn't mean it isn't true.
And this claim has nothing to do with falsificationism.
> we must embrace uncertainty as epistemic and embrace uncertainty whole-heartedly in science
That's just.. skepticism? Which is again completely incidental to whatever point you'd want to make.
> science is a collection of inductive degrees of belief that are updated in light of new evidence.
Something corroboration something
Unusual_Candle_4252 | 16 hours ago
Pilot wave and non-local universe it is /s Although, it's yet another interpretation while uncertainty principle Is a more general natural laws for congugated variables.
[OP] Novel_Arugula6548 | 15 hours ago
I'm actually QBist, but I believe a non-falsifiable modified version of somethibg like a pilot wave is the actual truth.
Unusual_Candle_4252 | 15 hours ago
I think there is one total WF for the Universe. The "collapse" we observe is a not well-defined separation of the local WF from the global one which can give all these epistemic problems with the interpretations of QM theory. Global WF just somehow (unitary?) evolves in time and we just a part of this evolution. Do we need an master pilot equation to govern it? Idk, looks like another imaginary degree of freedom to make the math mathing.
I am well enough that QM predictions can somewhat predict the outcome of the experiments.
[OP] Novel_Arugula6548 | 15 hours ago
Well time needs to be related to gravity, so I'm also against absolute time. We already know absolute time is wrong. In fact I think this is the key to finding the right pilot waves, something to do with the curvature of space due to gravity.
Unusual_Candle_4252 | 15 hours ago
Not the point but a good addition. With no unified theory, I cannot tell you by which total Hamiltonian we evolve. Anyway, the point that various QM interpretations arises due to false assumption of separability is my bread to go. Thus, the best interpretation of QM for now: "get the fůcking numbers in the Computer, Sinji!"