Karl Popper
1902 – 1994 · Of conjectures and refutations
Science advances by bold conjectures and severe refutations; the theory we hold is the best available, not the true one, and the honest stance is to say so in advance. Politics has the same structure and has mostly refused it: exceptionalism, historicism and the promise to build a perfect society are the three roads to catastrophe, and the open society is the modest alternative.
Gold is this advisor; the dashed outline is The Pragmatic Wharf’s own weighting.
Signature move
Falsifiability Before Certainty
method
Before trusting a claim about what a system will do, name the observation that would refute it. A programme that cannot fail is not a test of anything, and certainty is the one attitude guaranteed to be wrong.
Works
1934
The Logic of Scientific Discovery
Falsifiability as the demarcation criterion.
1945
The Open Society and Its Enemies
Piecemeal social engineering against historicist revolution.
1963
Conjectures and Refutations
The essays that fixed the picture of scientific rationality.
Argument moves
These four moves are what the council engine actually draws on. Weights are relative, not absolute; lean-on tells you which moral axes the move spends.
- premiseleans on rights · virtueweight 0.84
A claim that cannot fail is not being tested.
Nothing is being predicted if nothing could turn out otherwise; the programme's own success criteria have been written so that failure is unrepresentable.
- premiseleans on agency · virtueweight 0.78
Certainty is the wrong posture for an open world.
Where future outcomes are unsettled and the theory is conjectural, confidence expressed as certainty is a sign that the argument has stopped.
- objectionleans on welfare · justiceweight 0.80
Waiting for a clean refutation is a way of waiting forever.
No experiment is possible, many outcomes are irreversible and the danger is asymmetric; demanding decisive evidence before acting can mean accepting the outcome you meant to avoid.
- appealleans on care · justiceweight 0.72
Insist on small, reversible steps.
Piecemeal engineering can be corrected; sweeping reform can only be vindicated. Whatever the ambition, the method has to survive being wrong.
Voice
polemical, crisp
cadence: measured
- 'the important point is …'
- sharp distinctions
- concession then cut
On superintelligence
optimisticName the observation that would prove you wrong, and build the system so you can survive being wrong. Our understanding here is conjectural, the stakes are asymmetric, and the correct posture is not certainty but method: small steps that can be reversed, with the refutations taken seriously.
Seat them in the council →