It Might have Been True, Therefore It Must Have Been True

[jeff_duntemann]

There is a logic fallacy that I've seen a great deal in the last twenty years: "If X might be true, then X must be true." It sounds idiotic (it is; never allow yourself to stoop to it) but it's about the only draft animal that debunkers have in their mental stable. Most people have heard the

Comments

or perhaps

[happy_hacker]

Or perhaps it amounts to slashing about with Occam's razor. Weather balloons and such do represent a simpler explanation than asserting a supernatural event, the existence of a supernatural, and so forth. Interesting, though, that "simple" also seems to equate to "that which challenges established fact and theory the least."

Scientific inquiry is, in the end, a memetic system for developing knowledge and theory, and changing itself in the face of conflicting facts. It is very useful, but it bears remembering that it isn't perfect, particularly when dealing with un-repeatable events, especially when observed by only a few non-scientists. For purposes of science, these events simply didn't happen, whether they did in reality or not. This is science's great garbage collection meme at work: using itself (science) as the basis to filter out erroneous observations, and confining the information that is part of science to that which can be proven. It's one of science's great strengths as a mimetic system, though it is, at times, a little over-broad. Any event which appears to be supernatural *must* run afoul of it, by definition, as science is in the business of understanding nature. Once the body of science has expanded to the point that an event which, in earlier times would have been considered supernatural can be understood in a scientific context, the event ceases to be supernatural, and becomes both natural and scientific.

"I don't know." should be a statement readily used by any person who pursues science. Spock would say, "Insufficient data." Scientists don't, always, particularly when faced with supernatural memes, because supernatural memes are not so constrained, and are all too frequently capable of internal contradiction, which is an anathema to science. Wielding Occam's razor, a scientist might be tempted to say that since a supernatural meme has neither garbage collection nor internal consistency, it must be wrong.

Science is shameless. Witness the gradual "bunking" of acupuncture, after decades of scoffing as a placebo effect, as neurological science begins to get a grasp on why poking holes in your skin might really make you feel better, and apparently makes race horses feel better, despite a horse's having no expectation that being perforated means anything good.

Anyway. Interesting post. Thanks.

-Jim