So, did Nick mean this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Construct_validity ?
On 12/26/2014 11:35 AM, Marcus G. Daniels wrote:
General relativity predicts gravitational waves. A result of that prediction, elaborate measurement techniques have been devised like computational filtering of observatory data (Einstein @ Home) or superconducting devices to detect polarization of the cosmic microwave background (POLARBEAR 2). It's not a single thing to measure , but also other measurements of related phenomena, like the perihelion precession of Mercury.
It sounds like you're describing parallax, the idea of approaching something with many many meaures. Or perhaps "robustness analysis", in the sense that if a concept is modeled in many different ways and stays consistent across models, then it's a robust concept. I'm familiar with those methods ... though I have some issues with the latter.
But none of this seems to fit with what Nick seemed to describe, the idea that an experiment is validated by a (validator) concept. That just seems backwards to me... like some form of insidious justificationism. It would lead a researcher to conclude that if a test (any test) failed, it would _not_ falsify the concept. It would just mean you didn't know the trait/person/species well enough.
What sort of things does it make sense for [a]theists to say and do, and does these things occur (instead of the opposite) in a statistically significant way?
Well, my specific problem is that I think atheists and theists are delusional. They think they know things they cannot know. So, if Nick's point is that the concept of "theist" (or "atheist") is too muddy to define validatable[*] tests for, then, as an agnostic, I would completely agree. In fact, such a result would bring me quite a bit of joy! In other words, there can be no test for [a]theism because it's an incoherent concept. In fact, we're all agnostics, we just don't realize it.
[*] I would just say "valid" ... but too few people read broad words like that and work to find the submeaning appropriate to the context.
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