Story so far

In Map vs Territory we seem to understand that the belief and reality are rather quite different. We can solve this issue by looking at Empirical Evidence, for all beliefs that it’s imperative that they be understood. In order to focus on how to procure EE on our beliefs, we need to first make our beliefs into predictions, testable hypotheses, in other words Falsifiable hypothesis. This post is going to be about falsifiable hypotheses, how do unfalsifiable hypotheses look, how to get to a falsifiable hypotheses from an Unfalsifiable hypotheses (Rational Taboo) and all along with some personal examples.

The power of Unfalsifiable Hypotheses:

Trump said at one of his rallies, “We’re going to win so much. You’re going to get tired of winning. you’re going to say, ‘Please Mr. President, I have a headache. Please, don’t win so much. This is getting terrible.’ And I’m going to say, ‘No, we have to make America great again.’ You’re gonna say, ‘Please.’ I said, ‘Nope, nope. We’re gonna keep winning.’”. In a follow up, when a reporter told Trump, that this is totally subjective, and how anyone can verify that Trump has “won” it for America he says,”I will tell you when we have won, you will hear it from me”.

The crowd claps around like crazy, as though they understand what he is going to do for the country. But lets see if we really understand what he is saying. Trump says he is going to make America Win. What does Win even mean? Does he mean he’ll improve the insert economic unit term here, by 100 % or 1 %? President Trump clarifies within that same video, “We are going to win in the military, economy, health-care…”. What does winning in health-care even mean? Does he mean everyone will have health insurance for free? or a few people will have insurance or that the health insurance will be at an affordable rate(what is affordable? and to whom should it be affordable?)? There is no way, anyone understands what he is trying to say. Worst part is, when the reporter asks him how anyone can verify his claims of “Winning”, he clearly informs us that we cannot, and that he will tell us when we have won. The problem with that is his view is subjective, not objective. Only he can verify the outcome. It’s like saying there is an invisible unicorn in my backyard, you can’t see it or feel it, but you have to believe me. Sure. The problem is though that people think they understand it, but they are getting fooled. The definition of Winning is extremely unclear. That was the word that required clarification. Especially for us all, in the truth finding business, we need to have falsifiable claims before being able to gather the EE required to destroy or uphold it reliably.

What trump could have made instead is falsifiable hypothesis such as, “I am going to improve the insert economic unit here such as GDP, by 5 % at the end of the year”. Now everyone can test his Hypothesis and come to a conclusion easily. It is expected that everyone comes to the same conclusion. He either improved the GDP by 5% or not. End of discussion.

Some day to day examples will be:

I think America is going to pull through despite all the fuss people make about Donald Trump

What does pull through even mean? What is the point of saying something you cannot verify? And we don’t even know if he is talking about health care, the Dakota access pipelines, damage to planet etc.

I know God Exists, but you can’t see him, feel him or touch him. By the way did I mention he created this world. Also Science is too naive to explain this.

You can neither prove the existence of god nor his non-existence. Similar to unicorns, flying spaghetti monsters and flying tea cups.

The Dark Knight is the best movie ever

We would like statements that are of use and consequence, that can be tested and applied to our life if they provide sufficient EE. Like all the above quotes, these hypothesis do not make clear predictions that can be verified in an objective manner. I believe it’s primarily because we use words which can be interpreted differently by different people as in the above example. Clarifying on the detailed meaning of the words as shown in the following section could help, whenever one feels stuck or confused.

For more examples, I would like to point you to any proverb, even the ones from Robin Sharma (best selling author).

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Rationalists Taboo

I don’t believe in English serials.

Such a wonderful unfalsifiable statement. Enter Rationalists Taboo. It’s a game used to convert unfalsifiable statements into falsifiable statements. The word ‘believe’ in the above statement seems key. So lets Taboo that word. Now we have:

I don’t ___ in English serials

What do I want to say? In other words I wan’t to say that I find English serials too difficult to cope with for me. I pretty much end up binge watching it and thus waste a lot of time. I can’t look the other way when there are some serious cliffhangers. I end up spending too much time when I am supposed to be doing important work. More than 2 to 3 hrs a day.

I don’t wan’t to watch English serials as I spent more than 2 hrs a day on them in the past.

There is a drastic difference in the before and after statement. The ‘after’ statement is much more clear, verifiable. It informs us the impact that happens when I start watching serials. I spend more than 2 hrs. Cool!

Learnings: A statement should inform you what its impact is going to be, so that we can verify it. Thus a verifiable belief can end up being verified, bringing the Map and territory much closer using EEEE. When the impact is not clear, it automatically becomes a useless like the ‘before’ statement. You can’t do anything with it.

Climate change is real.

This is unfalsifiable max. Playing Rationalist Taboo, this then becomes “Climate __ is __”. What is the impact one is expected to see. For ex: Glaciers melting in the Artic? Temperatures rising beyond some number within a year? CO2 percentage in the earth has increased from ‘X’ to ‘Y’

Climate parameters such as CO2 percentage in the earth has increased from ‘X’ to ‘Y’.

or

Climate parameters such as Temperature has increased by one degree over the last year.

Verifiable.

Is he a good person or a bad person

I want to be the best in my class

Does god love you?

My life will be much better when I move to the other house that has a playstation

Ask for impact on each occasion and burn that motherfucker!

And so on…

Reflection

We are met with Unfalsifiable statements everyday, and it is useless and pointless dealing with. What I mean by that is you are not going to get anywhere, as they are unfalsifiable. Playing the game of Rationalist Taboo and converting it into falsifiable statements is key. It is very easy to make unfalsifiable claims, it does not require hard work. Look at Trump, for example. He hides behind words. Some of the many unfalsifiable statements are:

We are going to Win Win Win win_post

Just yesterday he said this about Sweden. He didn’t even say what happened, just left people hanging, going around the word Sweden.

We need to keep our countries safe, look at what happened last night in Sweden… Sweden who would believe this. They took in large numbers. They’re having problems like they never thought possible.

The problem with Falsifiable statements though is that you can be burnt alive by the truth! 2 or 3 days back trump held a press conference, in which this happened:

Trump: I had the biggest electoral college votes of 306 since Ronald Raegan Reporter delivers the chokeslam: Obama had 365 Trump: I was talking about republicans Reporter: Well then Bush had 426

You just got torched son! That’s the problem with falsifiable statements, it can burn people alive. And that is what we wan’t.

Summary

We are in the truth finding business. We realize that our belief and reality are quite different. We need EE to bring the Map and Territory closer. In order to do that, we first need falsifiable hypothesis, which means a verifiable hypothesis. With this it should now be possible to proceed on to EE.

In order to get Falsifiable hypothesis, we start with a belief (a bunch of lame ass words), we play the Rationalist Taboo and cross out the verbs and adjectives and try to seek the falsifiable statement we all deserve. The litmus test for the now “falsifiable” belief is to see if the belief, makes rock solid testable predictions, which can be tested. In other words, it explains the exact impact expected. If a hypothesis is not testable what use does it have. We can’t allow people or ourselves to get away with unfalsifiable hypothesis.

This post is largely inspired from an STMs blog on Rational Taboo!

Later

Pop quiz! I see that I had much trouble sometimes knowing if a statement was falsifiable or not! So need to make a post on that!