[ExI] ​Popper and unscientific theories

John Clark johnkclark at gmail.com
Thu Jun 9 20:08:17 UTC 2016


​The philosopher Karl ​
Popper
​said​
 a theory is unscientific if it makes a prediction that can't
​be ​
falsified
​regardless of how good experimenters become,​
​
 but what
​if​
 a theory that makes lots of predictions that could have been proven false
but
​weren't and ​
instead were
​ confirmed​
,
​but​

​the same theory ​
also makes some predictions that can't be falsified?
​Should we just pretend those predictions don't exist? ​
The Big Bang Theory makes a lot of predictions that have been confirmed and
one of them is that the universe is 13.8 billion years old
​,
and so regardless of where we point out telescopes
​it predicts ​
we
​can​
 never see anything more distant than 13.8 billion years. And
​indeed​
 our telescopes
​have never ​
see
​n anything more distant than 13.8 billion years. T
here are only 2 conclusion
​s​
 that can be​
 draw
​n​
from
​that ​
observation:

1) There
​are​
 lots of stars more distant than 13.8 billion
​light ​
years but we'll never be able to see
​them​

​because light hasn't had enough time to reach us and due to the
accelerating universe there will never be enough time to reach us.

​
2)
​Nothing exists that is more distant than 13.8 billion light years and ​t
he Earth is at the center of the Universe.

Despite what Popper might say I think #1 is the more scientific conclusion.
In a similar way Everett's Many Worlds Theory does such a good job
explaining how the 2 slit experiment
​works​
​
I don't think it's unscientific to conclude other worlds might exist.

​ John K Clark​
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