#defeasibility

"A theory is scientific if it has the property where a person can articulate an instance in which it would be wrong, in which it can be falsified.

If I tell you 'if the light is blue, x is true, and if the light is red, x is true,' that's not a scientific statement because there's no way that it will not be true at the end. I have to be able to propose an instance in which you might prove me wrong.

This is a very appealing idea, it has a bravado and a wagering quality to it, that a scientist must risk being wrong in order to be a scientist.

In 1919, eclipse expedition which confirmed Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity, and what most impressed him about it wasn't the ambition of the theory or the fact that it was confirmed. What he liked about it was Einstein said, 'if starlight isn't measured to bend around the sun during this eclipse then my theory is incorrect.'

He liked the wagering on being wrong. And he thinks that's the basic status of what a scientific theory is."

This is why religious ideas not just aren't scientific, but cannot be scientific. "Faith" insulates people from figuring out they're wrong.

     There are two things I expect from everybody when they espouse their positions or opinions: 1) Internal consistency, and 2) defeasibility.

     I take it that what I mean by "1" is apparent. What I mean by "2" is that some combination of facts must be able to show your opinions to be false. If you have an infinitely flexible position so that it can absorb whatever the facts are your opinion is worse than wrong, it is vacuous piffle.

     A good, current, real-world example of when your opinion lacks defeasibility is the controversy surrounding the experimental Ebola drugs, and the liberal idea that all Western interaction with the third and developing world is racist, imperialist, or colonial. The first thing to member is that the drugs are experimental (including even if it is serum). It is only because of the severity of this Ebola outbreak that the normal ethical concerns been curbed. So, if we give the drugs first to American doctors that have been infected trying to fight the outbreak in Africa, then the West is racist letting Africans die, because we are keeping all the medicine for our selves. This opinion has even been espoused by Jon Stewart on Aug 5th's Daily Show. Now, if we give the drugs to the Africans first the West is just using poor brown people to test their experimental drugs on instead of risking their own. I mean who cares if they die, or develop nasty side effects they are just human refuse, right? The Salon headlines write themselves; white people get ERBs and brown people are treated like lab rats.