Re: The reality of sets, on a scale of 1 to 10 (theory of theories)

On 03/24/2025 11:20 AM, Jim Burns wrote:

On 3/24/2025 12:08 PM, Ross Finlayson wrote:

On 03/24/2025 08:45 AM, Jim Burns wrote:

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Of course neither Big Bang nor Steady State
are falsifiable according to the usual tenets of
never violating time symmetry in physics and
not yet having found the end of the sidewalk or
Flat-Earthers.
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Either fit the data, any time, ....

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A big criticism of using falsifiability
to determine what deserves the label 'science'
is that
a theory can pretty much always be saved
by tweaking in various ways.
(See also Ptolemaic epicycles.)
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It seems that a theory can be saved
_and it will be saved_
until a better theory comes along.
Physics is not like mathematics.
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If, in some future,
enough evidence makes Flat Earth Theory
a better explanation than Round Earth Theory,
then I would expect Flat Earth Theory
to become the new (old) default explanation.
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I can chuckle about Flat Earth Theory,
but we have seen the smashing of theory.idols
at that level.
My memory may have invented this, but
I think 'revolution' as in
'out with the old bastards, in with the new'
was borrowed from Copernicus.
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Can't trust tweakers.
Any new scientific theory (of all the theories)
must not be falsified by _any_ of the data, or
it's just an application in a sub-field, not
"the theory".
So, the observation of apparent red-shift led to
what seemed more or less a confirmation, of expansion,
yet as scientists we must say "not falsification" of
the binary alternative, not "confirmation", much in the
same way as that conscientious statisticians one never
says "confirms" nor "predicts", only "doesn't invalidate"
then as with regards to confidence in estimators.
So, not having falsification as a scientific tenet,
is _not_ scientific, instead empirical, and it's
_not_ scientific, and it's invalid statistically as well.
Didn't you ever learn in statistics class that there's
only invalidating or rejecting the hypothesis and that
random variables have a true unknown distribution?
That would be pitiful and reflect a gap in vocabulary
and what results formally, syntax, in the language of
statistics, and it's about same for science.
No, you still haven't confronted yourself that the
inconstancy of either platonism or formalism is merely
self-deceiving vacillation, that it results then for
mathematics the theory both platonism and formalism,
and for physics a very thorough realism.
Then, you can pipe-dream all the flying-rainbow-sparkle-ponies
(which here in our conversation is abstract theoretical objects)
yet the Relephant is always Remembers.
Then, sometimes theories demand deconstructive accounts,
to result courtesy reason what's then structural again,
that up in your empirical inductive argument-from-authority
Russellian fiat, you're wrong, as axiomless natural deduction
can arrive at that Skolem and Mirimanoff broke Russell's theory
and anybody else can, too.