What do you forbid?
Key Question: How can we spot unfalsifiable beliefs? Better yet, how can we fix them?
Beliefs you can’t kill
Let’s say you’re a religious parent. If your five-year-old son dies of cancer, you say that God wanted him to come to heaven, that’s why he took him away so young. If your son survives, you say that God wanted him to fulfil his mission on the Earth, that’s why he let him be here. Nobody says, “Wait! I thought God wanted him back on heaven. How come he didn’t make your kid die?” Nope.
God can be infinitely kind, and still let 50 million people die every year. God can be boundlessly merciful, and still send poor, misguided souls to hell for eternity. No matter what happens, believers always have an explanation for it. Their belief in God cannot be falsified.
Similarly, take astrology. If you slip and fall in a puddle, it was, they say, because Venus was in the wrong position for you today. But, if you avoid slipping, they don’t come out and say, “Hey, he didn’t fall! That falsifies my theory! I predicted that he would fall. I’d better give up on this vocation and go do something else.” Nope, they have an explanation for every possible outcome - perhaps Mars was bright tonight. Their belief too cannot be falsified.
Lest you think it is only religious and woo-woo people who fall for this error, take a look at the market analysts on TV. If the stock market index goes up, they say it was because of the tax cuts announced by the Finance Minister. But, if the index goes down and the Finance Minister has announced tax cuts, they don’t say “Hey, my theory predicted that the index would go up, but it didn’t! That falsifies my theory!” No, they’ll dig around for something else that fits the data. They can find a clever explanation for every possible outcome. Otherwise they’d look dumb on TV, and who wants that?
What is happening here? Is it that these people are refusing to accept when their theory has made wrong predictions? Sometimes, yes. If you predict for sure that the Moon is farther away than the Sun, we can test it and get an answer either way.
But other times, the problem goes deeper. Sometimes, they make no clear prediction. Then, their theory has no connection with reality at all. How can you falsify a theory that gives you nothing to attack at?
Connection Not Found
Take this so-called hypothesis: “India is a great country”. Is this hypothesis correct?
How can you falsify it? Maybe you can point to the poverty statistics - more than 20% of the nation lives below the official poverty line. But, then, somebody else can point to how it is the world’s largest democracy. What say you? You can hit back with the corruption stats - India is ranked a woeful 85th out of 175 countries in transparency. But, then, that person rallies with the military stats - India has the third-largest standing army in the world. And so the argument drags on. Who’s right? Is India a great country or not?
If this were a debate, I would come to the podium at the conclusion, as the moderator, and cherry-pick both of your best arguments. At last, I would shake my head wisely and say that India is both great and not great and that it is just narrow-minded to try to put it in any one box. At the end of the day, India is a vast and complex nation, with a rich and varied heritage, and India is my country and all Indians are my brothers and sisters and whatnot, and there is no place like home. Thank you, and see you again next time on Debates Now.
But this isn’t a debate. This is science. We need to make accurate predictions. We can’t just get out of tough spots by shaking our heads wisely and spouting platitudes. Reality is a cold, harsh taskmaster. If you can’t get the right answers, reality will simply refuse to cooperate. You can’t negotiate with reality.
This can’t be happening
Where did the above “hypothesis” go wrong?
It failed because it didn’t tell you what to expect. Your beliefs must help you predict what will not happen. That is how you can falsify them.
The above hypothesis didn’t say what to expect from the military stats. If it had said that India must be in the top three (and therefore, that India wouldn’t be in the rest of the list), then it would be falsified if India were fourteenth. But it didn’t say any of that. Neither did it tell you about what to expect from the poverty stats, or the corruption stats, or anything else. It said nothing about anything.
How can you falsify something that doesn’t tell you what it rules out? You can’t. So, the above hypothesis remains as a belief floating in the air, making no contact with reality, safe from falsification. You can never eliminate it.
Stick your neck out
So what? Why care? What’s wrong with going on believing in something that doesn’t make falsifiable predictions?
Because unfalsifiable beliefs don’t help you make any useful predictions. Will my kid survive cancer? The God hypothesis has nothing useful to say. On one hand, God might want to take your kid to heaven (and note that you can’t observe what God wants). On the other hand, God might have some mission for your kid on this planet (again, something you can’t observe). So, you have no clue. It gives you no guidance as to what to do for the best results.
To make a useful prediction, you have to stick your neck out. Saying “it might rain… but, then again it might not rain” is useless to someone who wants to know if they should carry around an umbrella. A theory that says that it will rain only between 8pm and 9pm is much better.
Note that if it rains even a little at 7pm, that theory is finished. But, that’s great! We now know that we don’t have the full story and so can go look for better ideas. The sooner we find out we’re wrong, the better.
We care about falsifiable theories because they give us precise answers to our questions and, at the same time, help us know as soon as possible if they’re wrong. For example, germ theory says that using phenol will kill germs and prevent diseases; if you used phenol and still got diseases like before, that would shoot germ theory out of the water immediately. How great it would be if other “theories” (cough spirituality cough) submitted themselves to such falsification - we would know once and for all if they were wrong, and we could just drop the whole thing and move on.
Germ theory stood the test of time, and now we can apply phenol alone on surfaces we will use. We don’t have to wear special beads, recite prayers, or sacrifice goats. We know exactly what will work and thus don’t waste resources on anything else. Scientific theories are powerful precisely because they are so falsifiable.
So, how do you smoke out an unfalsifiable belief? You ask what it says will not happen. You don’t just ask whether the theory can explain some outcome. Any theory can do that in hindsight. That’s easy (“God did it” never goes out of fashion). You ask whether it sticks its neck out and forbids some outcomes. Else, throw it in the dustbin.
Notes
I learned the idea of constraining your anticipation (asking what your theory forbids) from Eliezer Yudkowsky’s mind-blowing essays on Mysterious Answers to Mysterious Questions.
Many of my examples above are from Eliezer’s talk at Skepticon.
Thanks to Mr. Agent for his feedback on this essay.
PS: Ain’t nothing like an essay to drill an idea clearly into your head.
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