{"id":4382,"date":"2019-11-29T09:02:33","date_gmt":"2019-11-29T13:02:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/?p=4382"},"modified":"2022-03-11T16:08:24","modified_gmt":"2022-03-11T20:08:24","slug":"falsification","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/falsification\/","title":{"rendered":"Falsification: Why You Should Try to Disprove Your Beliefs"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>What is falsification? Why is looking for ways to disprove our own theories productive?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Falsification is the act of looking for evidence that disproves a scientific theory. The idea was introduced by philosopher of science Karl Popper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We&#8217;ll cover why falsification is necessary for unbiased science.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Falsification and t<strong>he Scientific Grounds for Uncertainty<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>In the process of falsification, we actively look for evidence that disproves a scientific theory. Why? Falsification counters our natural tendency to see only that evidence that confirms our beliefs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>The Error of Confirmation<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>All too often we draw <em>universal<\/em> conclusions from a <em>particular <\/em>set of facts. For example, if we were presented with evidence that showed a turkey had been fed and housed for 1,000 straight days, we would likely predict the same for day 1,001 and for day 1,100.<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/nassim-nicholas-taleb\/\">Taleb<\/a> calls this prediction the \u201cround-trip fallacy.\u201d <strong>When we commit the round-trip fallacy, we assume that \u201cno evidence of <em>x<\/em>\u201d\u2014where <em>x <\/em>is any event or phenomenon\u2014is the same as \u201cevidence of no <em>x<\/em>.\u201d<\/strong> But if we had practiced falsification and looked for &#8220;evidence of no x,&#8221; we may have seen that these aren&#8217;t the same.<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Picture a turkey cared for by humans. It has been fed every day for its entire life by the same humans, and so it has come to believe the world works in a certain, predictable, and advantageous way. And it does&#8230;until the day before Thanksgiving.<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Made famous by British philosopher Bertrand Russell (though, in his telling, the unlucky bird was a chicken), this story illustrates the problem with <em>inductive reasoning<\/em> (the derivation of general rules from specific instances). <strong>With certain phenomena\u2014marketing strategy, stock prices, record sales\u2014a pattern in the past is no guarantee of a pattern in the future<\/strong>.<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In Taleb\u2019s words, the turkey was a <em>sucker<\/em>\u2014it had full faith that the events of the past accurately indicated the future. Instead, it was hit with a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/black-swan-theory\/\">Black Swan<\/a>, an event that completely upends the pattern of the past. (It\u2019s worth noting that the problem of inductive reasoning <em>is <\/em>the problem of Black Swans: Black Swans are possible because we lend too much weight to past experience.) Past experience confirms our beliefs; falsification shows us that the past can&#8217;t <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/no-one-can-predict-the-future\/\">predict the future<\/a>.<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Another example of faulty inductive reasoning, this time from the world of finance, concerns the hedge fund Amaranth (ironically named after a flower that\u2019s \u201cimmortal\u201d), which incurred one of the steepest losses in trading history: $7 billion in less than a week. Just days before the company went into tailspin, Amaranth had reminded its investors that the firm employed twelve risk managers to keep losses to a minimum. The problem was that these risk managers\u2014or suckers\u2014based their models on the market\u2019s <em>past performance<\/em>.&nbsp;Again, they weren&#8217;t looking for the problems, the evidence against their success. They didn&#8217;t practice falsification.<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the turkey illustration, we might assume that \u201cno evidence of the possibility of slaughter\u201d equals \u201cevidence of the impossibility of slaughter.\u201d To take a medical example, if a cancer screening comes back negative, there is \u201cno evidence of cancer,\u201d not \u201cevidence of no cancer\u201d (because the scan isn\u2019t perfect and could have missed something).<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In addition to drawing broad conclusions from narrow observations, we also have a tendency to <em>select<\/em> evidence on the basis of preconceived frameworks, biases, or hypotheses. For example, a scientist conducting an experiment may, often unconsciously, discount evidence that disconfirms her hypothesis in favor of the evidence that confirms it. It\u2019s more commonly known as \u201cconfirmation bias.\u201d This is the opposite of falsification.<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Taleb\u2019s solution to naive empiricism\/confirmation bias is <em>negative empiricism<\/em>\u2014the rigorous search for disconfirming, rather than corroborating, evidence. This technique was pioneered by a philosopher of science named Karl Popper, who called it \u201cfalsification.\u201d The reason negative empiricism\/falsification is so effective is that <strong>we can be far more sure of wrong answers than right ones<\/strong>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What is falsification? Why is looking for ways to disprove our own theories productive? Falsification is the act of looking for evidence that disproves a scientific theory. The idea was introduced by philosopher of science Karl Popper. We&#8217;ll cover why falsification is necessary for unbiased science.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":4412,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[60],"class_list":["post-4382","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-philosophy","tag-black-swan","","tg-column-two"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v24.3 (Yoast SEO v24.3) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Falsification: Why You Should Try to Disprove Your Beliefs - Shortform Books<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Karl Popper&#039;s falsification is looking for evidence that disproves a scientific theory. 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Learn why it&#039;s necessary for unbiased science.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/falsification\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Shortform Books\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2019-11-29T13:02:33+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2022-03-11T20:08:24+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/swan-falsification.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"777\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"521\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Amanda Penn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Amanda Penn\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/falsification\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/falsification\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Amanda Penn\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/01b0e4c9ddb993e51d03808839d538b0\"},\"headline\":\"Falsification: Why You Should Try to Disprove Your Beliefs\",\"datePublished\":\"2019-11-29T13:02:33+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2022-03-11T20:08:24+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/falsification\/\"},\"wordCount\":670,\"commentCount\":0,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/falsification\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/swan-falsification.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"The Black Swan\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Philosophy\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/falsification\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/falsification\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/falsification\/\",\"name\":\"Falsification: Why You Should Try to Disprove Your Beliefs - Shortform Books\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/falsification\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/falsification\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/swan-falsification.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2019-11-29T13:02:33+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2022-03-11T20:08:24+00:00\",\"description\":\"Karl Popper's falsification is looking for evidence that disproves a scientific theory. 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