I'll defer to Karl Popper on this
Falsifiability - Wikipedia
Also I don't see how falsifiability leads to problem with flat Earth being a theory. It is a theory that has been falsified.
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All About UFO's
- Thread starter Ron Texas
- Start date
I'll defer to Karl Popper on this
Also I don't see how falsifiability leads to problem with flat Earth being a theory. It is a theory that has been falsified.
No!
Flat earth hypothesis is certainly not that!
The scientific world certainly does themselves any good by calling anything and everything a “theory”
I think we are possibly in agreement but arguing semantics here.No!
Flat earth hypothesis is certainly not that!
The scientific world certainly does themselves any good by calling anything and everything a “theory”
And my language was less precise than it should have been - particularly as the scientific notion/definition of a "theory" is often misunderstood by the general public (sometimes deliberately) as being less certain than it actually is
Better if I say flat earth was a hypothesis that has been falsified?
Even then, the reality is that throughout human history it's doubtful if it was ever really taken seriously
So 'Aliens are visiting Earth' is a hypothesis, not a theory?
Has that hypothesis been falsified in the same way as the flat earth hypothesis has (which I am sure we can all agree)?
I see attempts here to falsify it with 'FTL travel is impossible therefore aliens cannot be here' but this does disregard that they could have travelled here at STL speeds. Since we don't know how long they live, or how they perceive the passage of time, or that they are even biological.
Are there other ways it can be falsified? Or should we accept that it is a possibility, albeit a highly unlikely one?
Has that hypothesis been falsified in the same way as the flat earth hypothesis has (which I am sure we can all agree)?
I see attempts here to falsify it with 'FTL travel is impossible therefore aliens cannot be here' but this does disregard that they could have travelled here at STL speeds. Since we don't know how long they live, or how they perceive the passage of time, or that they are even biological.
Are there other ways it can be falsified? Or should we accept that it is a possibility, albeit a highly unlikely one?
In that same way that "power cables sound different" is a hypothesis...
Is 'falsifying' the same as 'proving'? Not sure that it is.
You can find enough evidence to falsify the hypothesis that the earth is flat but I'm not sure we can say that is 'proof,' but only that sufficient doubt has been established to push the hypothesis beyond any reasonable level of credibility.
I'd rather we stick to the scientific terms as established up thread.
But easily falsifiable.
I'm asking if there is any way alien visitation hypothesis is falsifiable.
Pearljam5000
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It doesn't look that impressive for a UFO
It's interesting - I'm guessing your degree is in hard science so you're happy to give an 'It's nonsense, get over it' response, and refuse to discuss it further; whereas mine is in Philosophy where it's more acceptable to take an unlikely hypothesis and run with it a little, just to see where it goes.
Such as https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/are-we-living-in-a-computer-simulation/
It’s fascinating how these theories seem to follow the latest trends in technology. Not so long ago wasn’t the universe just “information” (big data)? Now it’s essentially AI (computer simulation)
It used to be clockwork and at some point I remember a theory that we were living in a giant hologram.
And didn’t god make us in his own image(ination)?
Not that I could come up with better, but it strikes me that the significant breakthroughs in explaining the universe haven’t come from extrapolating the current fashion.
PS when (if) I retire I’d love to go back to uni and study philosophy
True, and that point is made in the article I linked to.
It could be argued that it's impossible to come up with hypothesis that are outside or beyond our current (and past) perspective.
Petrushka
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Our current perspective includes fantasy.
solderdude
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That would have to be shot with an incredible shutter speed.
When it was a panned shot the background would have been blurred.
When the camera would have been stationary the fighter would have flown at a low speed and the guy shooting the low res picture would need to have fired a burst of shots (video) or pressed the shutter at exactly the same time.
Petrushka
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Let’s see the entire image, the entire negative.
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Not sure what an impressive UFO should look like, but while there is a lot of interesting context to that photo, the most mundane explanation to date is that it was an inverted cloud cover and a low flying jet:
UFO breakthrough as UK's most famous case 'finally solved' with bombshell claim
Six staggering photographs they took are said to show an odd diamond-shaped object in the sky, seemingly tailed by one or two Harrier jets. The images were reportedly handed to the the Scottish Daily Record by the witnesses for publication.
www.express.co.uk
I'd say the evidence for the mundane explanation is strong. Personally, I put little weight in photographs alone. If there's photographic evidence in context of other evidence that supports it, I'm liable to be interested. Multiple lines of evidence are required.
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sam_adams
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Because it's not a UFO. It's a 'shopped image based on the Calvine Sighting photo.
Possible 'shopped source image:
terryforsythe
Major Contributor
No. The Earth has been proven to not be flat. (But I'm sure there are Flat Earther's claiming the pictures of Earth from space are fake).
A theory is based on tested hypotheses, but not necessarily proven to be valid within the described constraints. For example, numerous aspects of the Theory of Relativity were not proven until long after the Theory was developed, with some aspects taking many decades to prove. Nonetheless, even before those aspects were proven, it still was considered a Theory. Today, it is still considered a Theory even though it breaks down at the quantum level, which are not constraints described in the theory, but which we now apply.
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