From Woit’s This Week’s Hype.
- anon. Says:
May 24th, 2007 at 6:15 am ‘I guess it’s all right that I don’t have time to comment on this, since no comment seems necessary…’ – Peter WoitGlad that you are not wasting time on fruitless arguments.Lubos is correct. Physics proceeds by asserting a theory is true and must be believed until it is disproved. Even when the theory is disproved, you must continue using it until a better theory comes along. It is very arrogant of certain people to assert that a person’s defense of extradimensional dogma isn’t physics. You must first prove string wrong, and provide the correct theory to go in its place. - Rick Says:
May 24th, 2007 at 6:41 am anon, it should go without saying that what you’ve said is nonsense. Science doesn’t proceed via theories that -cant- be disproven nor bring much to the table.I’d say a theory can’t be taken seriously unless it can propose a way in which it could conceivably be disproven, even if it has some amazing utility and explains many things. Unfortunately string theory fails all 3 of these tests so it’s even more useless than a generally unfalsifiable theory.
Filed under: Falsifiable quotes
