Spanish Banks/Bike /
There are few things better than the combination of a new bike and a free morning in Vancouver.
Of course, the real test of my new commitment to cycling will come when it's cold and pouring.
Frankfurt skyline /
On Science /
Hypotheses and Falsifiability according to Karl Popper
- It’s easy to find confirmations of nearly any theory – if all we look for are confirmations.
- Confirmations of a theory should count only if they are the result of risky predictions, and if they appear despite genuine efforts to refute the theory.
- No number of confirmations of a theory is sufficiently large to prove it, but only a single refutation is sufficient to disprove it.
- Every good scientific theory is a prohibition, i.e., it forbids certain things from happening. The more it forbids, the better it is.
- A theory that is not refutable by any conceivable experiment is non-scientific. Irrefutability is not a virtue; it is a vice.
- The strict criterion for a theory being scientific is falsifiability (not that it is false, but that it can be proven to be false.
Nathan's Addenda
- If two competing hypotheses cannot be distinguished by any conceivable experiment, then they are scientifically equivalent.
- We can come no closer to the truth than our own imaginations will allow.
