Conjectures and refutations

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1. darosatiApr 2022
   My research involve applying Popper's epistemology to natural language processing. So I am quite involved in this.

   As far as I can tell, almost all of what Popper tried to do with quantification measures of information are exactly what you are talking about.

   In particular Conjectures and Refutations covers this really extensively so I'd recommend reading or re-reading that. Though Logic of Scientific Probability covers an early form. David Miller's Critical Rationalism covers it well too and some of it's problems.

   I.e: His notion (shared with positivists like Carnap and others) that science is a set of logical statements. A collection of statements is a theory, a theory entails a set of predictions which is called the information content of the theory (sometimes I(c) or C(I) in his notation).

   If the I(c) > I(c') where c' is a competing theory then it is said to have more explanitory power. I.e. it makes more predictions.

   This is part of his defnition of what makes a good explanation and what david desutch calls "hard to vary".

   The other main part of the definitition is about whether these statements reflect Truth in anyway.. that is covered by his notion of verisimiltude or truthlikeness which is quantified as the degree to which the information content of a theory I(c) can be corroborated.

   Both of these are essentailly "The predictive strength of someone's Truth"

   The problem you and many other have probably encountered is the information content of an explanation is *intractable* it's an open set of statements which cannot full by fleshed out. So instead we can never have a perfect quantification of whether my theories or your theories are better... there may indeed be statements entailed by flat earth theory that have yet to be discovered and could indeed be more corroborated and provide better information content than a non-flat earth theory! Popper revels in this fact and fully embraces it.

   Beyond Popper though, we need to understand more of the dynamics of "predictive strength" - I am finding causality a great source of literature that for which I would recommend Judea Perl and the Book of Why among other things.

   For Philosophy of Science in particular there are ton's of great articles on stanford encyclopedia of philosophy about Explanation that go into this in depth - in fact the positivists like Carnap wrote amazing things about this which I would recommend.

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2. defaultprimateFeb 2022
   You should read Karl Popper's Conjectures and Refutations.

   You can be open to new evidence defining what objective truth is without dismissing the existence of objective truth due to unknown unknowns.

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3. chephJan 2021
   If you are only for free speech if you find the speech tolerable, then you don't understand the concept or you are not for free speech.

   Similarly, If you only support democracy if people vote the way you want, then you do not understand the concept of democracy or you do not support democracy because that is not what supporting democracy means.

   There has been violent riots in the US all throughout 2020, I think they were bad, but I don't think for one moment the right solution was to prevent the people who attended them from being able to voice their opinions.

   There were also claims that the 2016 election was fraudulent and illegitimate since 2016.

   If you were okay with all of that, but just object to this because of the outcome, you should look at why.

   It may be worth reading Public Opinion and Liberal Principles, Conjectures and Refutations, Chapter 17 by Karl Popper (https://pastebin.com/1JdawXUd)

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4. 8iterationsAug 2018
   "Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge" is my favorite work by Karl Popper. His 1945 work on the Paradox of Tolerance seems more appropriate here.
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5. bduerstApr 2016
   That's what I just said, followed with what it's focus is which you ignored.

   Since you have a lot of questions and I don't really have the time to give a history lesson in science philosophy, you should read Conjectures and Refutations by Karl Popper if you are genuinely earnest with your inquiries to learn more.

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6. noahltDec 2015
   I would add: Conjectures and Refutations, by Karl Popper.
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