Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit
qlte | on: I don't understand quantum physics (2018)
...uh, by using the abundant evidence from radiometric dating, geology and archeology that the world is much older than 6000 years old?

Plus astronomical observations used in cosmology to model the state of the universe milliseconds after the big bang which eventually evolved into our locally observable region of space around 13.8 billion (not 6000) years later?

That doesn't prove the dinosaurs were in fact living beings but this isn't necessary to disprove the other assumptions of the alternative hypothesis. By parsimony that leaves the hypothesis that dinosaur fossils emerged by natural processes like everything else we've observed on Earth to date.

Am I missing a joke? Because this is definitely not a good example of a hypothesis impossible to disprove with available evidence.

(If the response is "how do you test whether all that evidence was faked 6000 of years ago to deceive scientists" then we're not actually doing science anymore but games of make believe)

mitthrowaway2 | parent
That's exactly what we're doing. Obviously I don't believe the initial conditions of the universe were set 6000 years ago, and just look billions of years older by mere coincidence. My point -- directed at its parent comment -- is that we can scientifically prefer one hypothesis over the other, even though they're indistinguishable by any experiment because they make identical predictions.

Instead, we can use other forms of reasoning, such as probability and Ockham's razor. These are perfectly valid approaches.

You seem to agree with me on this point, so I direct your attention to the grandparent comment:

> I'm interested in logical arguments for why I should be convinced that something completely impossible to ever test, not even in theory, is correct.