[ExI] ​Popper and unscientific theories

[John Clark]

On Sat, Jun 11, 2016 Dan TheBookMan <danust2012 at gmail.com> wrote:

> if Popper knew what a 4D hypersphere was (and he almost certainly
>> > didn't) he would say the existence of such a thing was a untestable
>> > hypothesis and the simplest explanation that fit the observable facts
>> > is the Earth is at the center of a regular old 3D sphere with a 13.8
>> > billion light year radius and no fancy stuff is required. I would
>> disagree.
>
>
> ​> ​
> Where are you getting this from? I'm not a fan of Popper and I'm not sure
> what he know about geometry, but he actually praised Einstein for
> relativity theory, especially general relativity because he believed
> Einstein's theory made testable predictions
>

​OK lets talk about testable predictions. If the universe were a finite
4D
​ h
ypersphere
​ then if you kept moving in a straight line you'd eventually come back to
were you started, and if we look at the variation in the microwave
background radiation in one part of the sky we'd expect it to match up with
the pattern 180 degrees away, but we observe no such correlation. That
could be explained if the universe is larger that 13.8 billion light years,
the light informing us of such a correlation hasn't had time to reach us
and in a expanding acceleration universe it never will. But that's not
testable, Popper would say we're not allowed to hypothesize about places we
can never observe, therefore things must be the way things seem to be and
the Earth is at the center of the universe.

John K Clark         ​
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