Re:Uber charges more if you have credits in your account
by nfw2 on Sunday September 22, 2024 @10:53PM
(#41622035)
I'm not saying what you think I am saying. The theory that "Uber price is always independent of whether the rider has credits" is indeed falsifiable, and the experiment in the anecdote seems to do so.
The opposite claim, "that Ubers do not always charge the same rate" -- the one that logically flows from falsifying the first -- is the claim that is unfalsifiable.
Is it a valid criticism of the claim? I would generally agree with you and say not really.
Re:Uber charges more if you have credits in your account
by nfw2 on Sunday September 22, 2024 @10:29PM
(#41621902)
How the term is used: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability
From Karl Popper: "The only way to verify a claim such as "All swans are white" would be if one could theoretically observe all swans, which is not possible. On the other hand, the falsifiability requirement for an anomalous instance, such as the observation of a single black swan, is theoretically reasonable and sufficient to logically falsify the claim."
How is this different from what I am saying?
No. That would only prove something about your specific time/location/instance of the experiment. It doesn't prove that the law holds in all time/space/instances of the experiment. That's literally impossible to prove, and that's what you're demanding here. You're claiming that just because you can't prove the pricing theory always holds then it's unfalsifiable. That's nonsensical and not how anybody uses the term.