About this episode

The episode discusses the Duhem-Quine thesis and its implications for falsification and independent thinking.

It's only taken us 104 episodes of talking incessantly about Karl Popper to get one of the most important and popular criticisms of falsification: The Duhem-Quine thesis. Should we wrap the podcast here? Is it game over? We discuss Does AI need more economic thinking? The role of background knowledge in conversation The allure of verificationism The Duhem-Quine thesis The role of competing theories in combatting the thesis Are conspiracies the price we pay for independent thinking? References Michael I. Jordan on ML Street Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AREWYbVtX64 Our conversation with Ben Recht: https://www.incrementspodcast.com/91 Quotes People involved in a fruitful critical discussion of a problem often rely, if only unconsciously, upon two things: the acceptance by all parties of the common aim of getting at the truth, or at least nearer to the truth, and a considerable amount of common background knowledge. This does not mean that either of these two things is an indispensable basis of every discussion, or that these two things are themselves ‘a priori’, and cannot be critically discussed in their turn. It only means that criticism never starts from nothing, even…

People in this episode

Hosts: Ben Chugg, Vaden Masrani

Topics covered

• Duhem-Quine thesis
• falsification
• AI and economics
• background knowledge
• verificationism
• competing theories
• independent thinking

Keywords

• Duhem-Quine thesis
• Karl Popper
• falsification
• AI
• verificationism
• background knowledge
• conspiracies

Mentioned in this episode

Books & works: C&R, Chap 10

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