Created: August 21, 2020
Modified: August 21, 2020
Modified: August 21, 2020
not true enough
This page is from my personal notes, and has not been specifically reviewed for public consumption. It might be incomplete, wrong, outdated, or stupid. Caveat lector.- Something can be true but not 'true enough'.
- That is, you have a compelling causal theory for why X should increase Y.
- It might be that the processes that you posit do happen and do exert a positive force on Y. But there might be some other causal chain that also fires and tends to decrease Y, and if that chain is dominant, the net effect might be negative.
- There's a difference between falsifying a theory by showing that its causal chain doesn't fire, and 'falsifying' by showing that its effect isn't dominant. But both do have the consequence that it becomes less compelling to keep them in limited memory. On the other hand, in the second case you leave open the possibility that in the future you might be able to exert finer-grained control that triggers the posited causal chain without triggering the opposing effect.
- see also: true but wrong, non-dominating force