Re: The Promise of Forth

Guy Macon wrote:
John Doty wrote:

It [deficiency in the language hypothesis] is testable.

I eagerly await your description of your test methodology, followed by the results of your test. Let me know when you publish.
[FX: Sound of crickets chirping. A coyote howls in the distance...]

I am allowed to reject *any* untestable hypothesis. You can't claim it's "God's will" or "voodoo" either. There is nothing more useless than an untestable hypothesis. The rejection of untestable hypotheses is the primary difference between science and superstition.

The whole point of the null hypothesis (which includes "God's will" and "voodoo" as subsets, along with "random chance" and all unknown causes that you haven't though of yet) is that the null hypothesis *is* untestable. You have been given several excellent URLs explaining how it works, yet you choose to remain willfully ignorant.

You obviously didn't understand what you read. This has been explained to you before, yet you choose to remain willfully ignorant.


To be specific, "voodoo" is untestable. No test can prove or disprove the hypothesis that the reason Forth is not as popular as C is because Chuck Moore pissed off a Voodoo priest who then cursed Forth.

Your "deficiency in the language" hypothesis is also untestable.

I don't think it is untestable. If users did not report deficiencies, and no deficiencies were evident, I don't think it would be a viable hypothesis. It's like the hypernova hypothesis for gamma ray burst origins: if we did not see the ejected stellar envelopes in those cases where we've looked for them with adequate sensitivity, it would not be a viable hypothesis.

This has been explained to you before.

No test can prove or disprove your hypothesis that the reason Forth is not as popular as C is because of some deficiency in Forth.

No test can prove it. The observed facts have failed to disprove it. That's how it is with successful hypotheses.

This has been explained to you before.


This is not a reason to accept either explanation, but rather a reason to reject both.

No. This has been explained to you before.


You have to show that your "deficiency in the language" hypothesis
is more likely than Voodoo, God's will, Random Chance, and all other
unknown and untestable explanations (AKA the null hypothesis.)

No, I do not have to consider untestable hypotheses.

You have not done that. You have instead decided that you don't have to.

That's the scientific method.


Virtually everyone who has looked at your argument has determined that, having failed to show that your proposed reason for Forth not
being as popular as C is more likely than the null hypothesis (AKA no reason at all, some reason we haven't thought of, etc.), you have failed to make your case.

Virtually everyone who agrees isn't on this forum. And many on this forum suffer from an idolatrous and unscientific attitude toward logic.

Some reason I haven't thought of is completely possible. But I can't consider hypotheses that nobody has thought of. This is normal.


You can go on insisting that all those who have examined your argument and found it unconvincing are wrong, but that does not change the basic fact that yur argument is based on a logical fallacy

See my signature. If logic could find the truth, Aristotle would have found quantum field theory.

This has been explained to you before.

that it itself based on you mis-stating the null hypothesis and then knocking down the man of straw you just created.

This has been explained to you before.


You don't understand the use of the null hypothesis. The argument you are using can be used to reject *absolutely anything* that you choose to disbelieve, turning all knowledge into a matter of pure faith. There is *always* an untestable hypothesis for *any* event in the real world.

This has been explained to you before.

--
John Doty, Noqsi Aerospace, Ltd.
http://www.noqsi.com/
--
History teaches that logical consistency is neither sufficient nor necessary to establish practical, real world truth. Those who attempt to use logic for that purpose are abusing it.
.

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