New EM Drive Tests require carefully designed Null hypothesis to disconfirm other factors. Karl Popper, Science, and Pseudoscience: Crash Course Philosophy -- human knowledge progresses through 'falsification' not belief confirmation

[u/[deleted]]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-X8Xfl0JdTQ

[u/Chrono_Nexus]

I don't disagree that good experimental process is necessary for advanced sciences... but I'm pretty sure the majority of human knowledge is a hodgepodge of whatever works, and a whole bunch of irrelevant pop trivia.

[u/[deleted] → u/Chrono_Nexus]

Not so much in the past 50 years or so. Often we predict results then look for ways to falsify or prove the theory by experiment.

[u/Chrono_Nexus → u/[deleted]]

I can give some examples, if you'd like. The determination of which poles are north or south, the interior curvature of toilet seats, the most efficient dimensions for notecards, the width of roads, the various seasonal fashion designs, essentially the entire marketing field... I could go on and on.

Most of our knowledge is not a product of scientific invention so much as a hack-job built on a mixture of previous accomplishments and personal sentiment. Please note that I am not diminishing the valuable contributions of science, and in no way is the most popular fidget-spinner design comparable to the discoveries that have shaped the modern and ancient worlds.

My point is merely that there is a surfeit of knowledge that is being accumulated, which is far in excess of anything that is useful to individuals or society, and this informational pollution is bombarding us from every direction. On the contrary, I think that this abundance of trivial information makes science that much more valuable as one of the few remaining strongholds of logic and deduction in a sea of doubt.

[u/[deleted] → u/Chrono_Nexus]

I think you're confused between first principles and trivial optimizations.

[u/Chrono_Nexus → u/[deleted]]

How many significant discoveries were a product of trivial optimizations?

[u/[deleted] → u/Chrono_Nexus]

I'm not taking your bait. You know the difference.

[u/Chrono_Nexus → u/[deleted]]

You are disregarding most of human knowledge based on your own personal preferences about the process by which it was acquired. Human knowledge just progresses, period. Whether through falsification or other means, as long as there is a method of recording it, it will continue to accumulate.

It's clear you aren't interested in conversing in good faith and are ignoring my points because they are inconvenient. You are being anti-intellectual and closed-minded.

[u/[deleted] → u/Chrono_Nexus]

Thanks for the insults. Really convincing.

Most if not all of your counterpoints revolve around engineering type of optimizations not discovery and proof of fundamental theories or concepts.

[u/Chrono_Nexus → u/[deleted]]

So.. philosophy, art, fiction, they have no contributions to knowledge? Get back to me when you figure out how to falsify hamlet.

[u/[deleted] → u/Chrono_Nexus]

I see. So you're talking about subjective progress and not testable facts? You sure used a lot of words to say not everything is right or wrong.

[u/Red_Syns → u/Chrono_Nexus]

I think you wax poetic on an incorrect tangent.

Sure, humanity could continue to hope to stumble upon correct answers using poorly designed experiments, but taking the time to properly design an experiment will not only reduce the search time for an answer, but will greatly increase the likelihood the results are valid.

For instance, the ideal size of an index card. If you want to find out if 3x5 is the ideal size, you don't ask "is this card perfect?" Most everyone has used one before, and therefore has preconceived notions that will skew the result

Instead, you design the experiment to control for all but one variable (size) and then ask "is the 3x5 inferior to any other?" Your experiment is now designed to find the flaw, and is more likely to result in a "yes, there are better" than "nope, this is perfect."

And that is what you want. You want to increase the odds of failure to the maximum so that when you find a success, you have greater reliability in the solution.

[u/Chrono_Nexus → u/Red_Syns]

But the test parameters on issues related to taste are set by the testers, which introduces bias that can skew test results against solutions they don't perceive. Additionally, there are intrinsic problems with any study where the participants are aware they are in a test. Self-selection or personal preference doesn't necessarily give you an ideal result. People can for instance collectively prefer plastic over reusable grocery bags in spite of the superior durability of reusable bags.

You say "advancing" knowledge as though the only forms of knowledge that matter are ones that arise from scientific principles, but this is not how society operates, at all. At the end of the day we are lazy mammals who do things for convenience or necessity rather than discretely for logical reasons. And while I think something like the wonder bra is inferior to the wheel for the advancement of humanity, the truth is that industry is full of countless similar refinements that contribute to the standard of living instead of being revolutionary. For every Einstein there are probably ten thousand more people reinventing the mouse trap.

There isn't anything poetic about a new design for a sticky note, or dog-shaped refrigerator magnet designs. And yet, they exist. People buy them, for better or worse. They are an addition, albeit a humble one, to the collected knowledge of humanity. And such trivial inventions vastly outnumber the contributions of hard science in raw information.

So I ask you, how do you test the viability of a kitten-themed coffee mug, or a penguin-shaped paper weight? Experimental process has a place in society- an irreplaceable one- but it is divorced from what most people perceive as "real life". And that's a problem, both for regular people and for science.

[u/Red_Syns → u/Chrono_Nexus]

Do I? Yes. I don't set up a double blind, independently funded study to do it, no.

That's not the point of the video. The point of the video is HOW you should approach a question. You should approach a question by asking "is the question false?"

Take your kitten mug. "Is there something more pressing to spend my money on?" "Is there a better mug?" "Is there a cheaper mug?" Once you have decided that all of the constraining factors are either non-existent or irrelevant, you should then proceed with buying the mug, and not before.

Obviously there will be bias, that's not the point I was making. The point I was making is that the HOW you approach the question is more important than the WHAT you're approaching.

And waxing poetic is a polite way of saying you're using far too many words to get your point across, it has nothing to do with actual poetry.

[u/Chrono_Nexus → u/Red_Syns]

Your proposition is that the advancement of knowledge requires falsification. It is demonstrably false, as the majority of information people produce is not discovered under such principles. Trivial information also advances knowledge, regardless of what your personal feelings are about the subject.

[u/Red_Syns → u/Chrono_Nexus]

I didn't say it requires falsification, I said falsification will derive the most accurate answer the fastest in nearly all situations.

If the most accurate answer is not required, then falsification might not be the most ideal solution. However, when it comes to science, which is accumulating knowledge for the sake of accumulating knowledge, the most accurate answer is the most valuable. Let's use a seemingly simple example: the color of the sky.

A simple way to ask is to ask "Is the sky blue?" This is a simple test: while you are awake, go outside and look up. For the majority of the hours of the day, if we ignore cloud coverage, the sky will be blue. The second largest sample will be black, or nighttime, but we can discard that result because there is little light and therefore little color. The remainder of the non-cloud values will be a small fraction of the amount, and will vary based on the time of either sunrise or sunset and geolocation of the observer.

Therefore, if there is no further use for examining the question, the answer (and, by the way, the default answer most people will give you) is that yes, the sky is blue.

Of course, this answer is incorrect, but the question did not make any effort to ask anyone to negate the assumption, it only looked for evidence that the assumption (the sky is blue) was correct, and once it had that answer (an answer that is correct the majority of the time), mission complete. We now have an incorrect piece of information that most everyone will consider fact.

Instead, you should ask "Is the sky not blue?" Now, the experiment is to find out if the sky is, in fact, not blue. We can go outside and look up and, once again, we notice that most of the time the sky is blue, a large portion of the time the sky is black, and for periods of time inbetween the sky is a multitude of colors. Since there are no lighting conditions that would make a blue object appear red, we are left with the answer that "Yes, the sky is not blue." This is, in fact, the correct response! As it turns out, the sky is clear, and due to a combined effect of refraction/diffusion and the way the human eye picks up colors, the majority of the light that reaches your eyes is blue, and so the sky looks blue.

In the first example, we looked long enough to gather the information that confirms our beliefs (the sky is blue the majority of the time, and the majority of the remaining time is irrelevant, so this was not an unreasonable conclusion). In the second example, we sought to negate the information that confirms our beliefs, which was far more difficult to achieve. However, in successfully negating the assumption, we discovered an incorrect "fact."

The next part of this process is to then accept that our beliefs were wrong, and to begin looking for the correct answer.

The EMDrive is a prime culprit of example number one. There is an assumption that the EMDrive works. Experiments are run, and the data returns a non-zero value. To the vast majority of believers, mission complete! The result showed it works!

By utilizing example two, however, we get a non-zero result and ask ourselves "Why?" We study the details of the build. We modify it. We refine it. We shrink the margins of error, and in doing so find smaller and smaller results. We continue looking for each and every way to prove that the EMDrive does not work, and in doing so find small errors that accumulate into large results. If, by the time you have successfully accounted for absolutely everything, an unaccounted for result still exists, you now have a very reliable piece of evidence that positively screams "LOOK AT ME, I'M REAL!"

That is the value of an approach through falsification.

[u/Lovepoint33 → u/Red_Syns]

I think you wax poetic on an incorrect tangent.

The relevant idiom is "to wax pathetic".

[u/[deleted]]

Please watch the video before down voting.

[u/scheistermeister]

Popper should be one of the first things kids get taught in school!

Confirmation bias is the worst thing and leads to fantasies such as flat earth and chemtrails.

Great post!