What do you think distinguishes between times when that is the appropriate response, and times when it isn’t?
Well it should never be the sole response in my opinion. But it’s most problematic when there is not much a priori reason to believe in your hypothesis and there is a strong competing hypothesis.
Why not? Your hypothesis represents your best prediction based on all the data you’ve gathered so far. A falsification of the hypothesis represents one more data point; why would you come up with an entirely new hypothesis if a tweak to the current one can explain the additional data point? Why should there be some other response, other than modifying the hypothesis to account for new data?
Because if your hypothesis is falsified, you should always at least consider the possibility that you are dead wrong. Otherwise you are likely end up in an endless cycle of adding epicycles. It doesn’t mean you have to throw the whole thing out, but you need to consider the possibility.
In many ways, this is what has been happening with CAGW. Not exactly, since there is the problem with falsification criteria not being laid out. However, a lot of evidence has come out which undermines the hypothesis and the warmists seem reluctant to consider the possibility that the whole hypothesis is wrong.
As has been pointed out many times, that is not true, at least based on the baloney examples posted so far by the likes of him.
I’m merely asking what would, hypothetically, falsify the whole thing – and it seems to me like you’re dishonestly refusing to deal with it. If it seems like I’m not dealing with something, it’s because I’m not asking whether it’s “hard to find falsifications of the lines of evidence” – and I’m not asking for your “explanations of the answers” or “why it is unlikely for that falsification to come”.
You keep answering questions I haven’t asked while ducking the only one that matters – occasionally making the specific disclaimer that you’re in fact solely dealing with *“the falsification of only one aspect of the whole thing.”
*
You’re the one making a claim. I’m merely asking you to clarify that claim: what exactly are you predicting, such that we’ll know (a) what hypothetical evidence would be consistent with it and (b) what wouldn’t. (And what good would it do for me to be your guest on falsifications? If I name a falsification criterion that comes to pass, I’ll say “You Were Wrong” and you’ll reply “That Wasn’t My Criterion” and I’ll say “Then Name Your Criterion” – so shouldn’t we just go to that step?)
No, that’s not all I based it on. I based it on the fact that, if someone asked me what hypothetical evidence could falsify the whole thing – not merely “the falsification of only one aspect of the whole thing”, but quite simply “the whole thing” – then I could answer, in crisp and brisk terms.
I could do that instead of calling it a 10:20:30 question – it obviously isn’t – and without merely setting up falsification criteria I promptly admit would leave “the whole thing” standing whether they come to pass or not.
If you can do that for AGW, then your analogy to smoking would get me to treat the stuff the same way I treat falsifiable predictions about cigarettes being harmful: the same way I treat falsifiable predictions about everything else. If you can’t, then I’ll treat it the same way I treat unfalsifiable predictions: figuring, as always, that if no hypothetical evidence can prove 'em wrong, then no hypothetical evidence can prove 'em right.
You still don’t get it, do you?
We could get a new ice age, with wolly mammoths and 50 cm of snow in the Sahara plus an iced-out Caribbean sea and still CAGW will not be disproved.
Yes. CAGW + epicycles = ice age
See, for the Religious Left, that’s How Science Works.
You start with a favored hypothesis. If evidence comes in which undermines or falsifies the hypothesis, you just tweak the hypothesis as necessary. The fundamental truth of the favored hypothesis can never come into doubt.
Fundamentally, it’s no different from the “psychic” who claims that his powers don’t work in the presence of styrofoam.
The problem with people like GIGOBuster is that he knows it will make him look bad if he admits that no evidence would ever change his mind (as long as the High Priests keep the faith). So he tries to avoid admitting it to himself and to others.
In what language does this make sense? If you tweak a hypothesis, it’s fundamentally not the same hypothesis. Your proposed alternative makes no sense whatsoever.
You gotta talk to my man J. Kepler. He had a hypothesis (that planets’ orbits were realted to regular solids), he worked his ass off until he realised it just didn’t work, it kinda did, but clearly it was wrong because it assumed circular orbits.
He re-worked his theory, and came up with his 3, MFing laws.
Climate science needs a Kepler. instead of trying to fit observations by plugging your theory, you need a new one.
Indeed: he tweaked his theory the minimum necessary to make it match the new data, and then he retested. In his case, the minimum necessary was a huge amount, not a small amount.
Is the confusion that “minimum” looks too much like “minimal” to some people? They’re two different words.
Consider the following two hypotheses:
(1) James Hydrick can turn the pages of a telephone book using telekinesis.
(2) James Hydrick can turn the pages of a telephone book using telekinesis, but not if there is styrofoam nearby.
Technically they are different hypothesis, but the fundamental proposition – that James Hydrick is telekinetic – is the same.
Under your approach, it’s natural and normal to go from (1) to (2) without questioning the fundamental proposition involved. You make an exception for cases of “obvious fraud” but you refuse to explain how “obvious fraud” is determined.
Nope it is you who doesn’t get it, it is very unlikely that that ice age would come soon, but if it does, by it would already had disproved AGW, BTW calling it CAGW is another boiler plate denier point.
I agree with this analogy to an extent. At least according to legend, people clung to the fundamental assumption that orbits were circular. Rather than get rid of this assumption and consider the possibility that orbits are eliptical, they constructed epicycles and then epi-epicycles and so on.
So that today the word “epicycle” is a slang word for a tweak you add to a favored hypothesis to make it fit the data.
In the case of climate science, the Holy Assumption is that the climate system significantly amplifies warming through water vapor feedback.
The problem with your analogy is that the climate may be too chaotic for someone like Kepler to come along and make sense of it. People accept that it’s flat out impossible to predict weather anomalies more than a week or two in advance. It’s possible – even likely – that it’s impossible to predict climate anomalies on the scale of decades.
And if all the data in the world that you have is that James Hydrick can turn the pages of a telephone book, then:
a) You’re an incredible ignoramus; and
b) The second hypothesis is sensible.
If, however, you’re not an incredible ignoramus, then you have sufficient additional data to make hypothesis #1 so unlikely that it’s not the best hypothesis in the first place, and what you do is come up with another hypothesis:
- James Hydrick is a fraudster who turns the pages of a telephone book using his breath.
that accounts for all the data you have most efficiently. Then THAT’s the one to falsify.
Of course to reach the heights of idiocy this guy does not care to cite anyone saying that.
Of course that ignores that scientists had to work and falsify a lot of ideas that told early scientists that we should not worry about this issue for more than 100 years.
If the physic had done the same thing for 100 years… he would had gotten the same result.
Piffle, this can be falsified, what it is clear is that you guys do not like the clarification that history, evidence and the fact that most of the points against it are baloney, point at how unlikely it will be falsified.
Climate science got his Kepler, his mane was Plass. And he was already mentioned, but thanks for showing your levels of ignorance to others.
What specific benchmark would have “already” disproved it before then?
It is interesting to note that you run and jump all over anything you disagree with by labeling it as ‘denialist’ yet cannot post the answer to the question about falsification.
Makes me wonder who is in denial.
Slee
As creationists say, “Any fact can be fit into the theory of evolution. Therefore, evolution is not falsifiable and is not a proper scientific theory.” Of course they are still wrong.
Same thing goes here, there is a method to the madness of roasting deniers :). Sooner or later they do come unhinged and say even more idiotic things, remember, one of the reasons why I continue dealing with you was to point out how idiotic it was to blame the UN (that when looking at all other sources and the context they never claimed what you claimed) for your limited 10:20:30 point of the warmest years telling** only you** that there has been no warming, it limited itself to a very inadequate way to falsify the whole thing, and the point was made that one needed to look at the big picture, so it is beginning to look as if finally you decided to drop the idiot point.
As mentioned before one needs to backtrack many years into the past and then begin to falsify the items researchers found before.
Notice that it could had been falsified every time the measurements were done in all those 50 years. That and a lot of the AGW basis does go away (and as mentioned before you just needed to look at the site to find those falsifications.)
And here comes the point that mentions how unlikely it would be to falsify this now, but you confuse those clarification points with wiggle room and walking away from the falsification, that is only happening in your imagination, what I do is an “I’m just saying”, you are indeed just waiting for the Rabbit to kill itself.
As for the new idiot point from Aji the Gallina:
The Ice Age enters into the territory of Milankovith cycles.
The point here is that we already know why ice ages take place and it is too early, by the time a new ice age comes I would not be surprised to find that science will then recommend applying then the same geoengineering that we are doing now, only on purpose. Confirming or refuting the theory in about an average lifetime. Of course here one has to point out that even before then the theory was vindicated once again a long time ago.
- This has been observed on many reconstructions of the temperature record, there was a prevalent cooling trend until the warming brought by CO2 began to go over what the temperature should be now.