Saturday, November 7, 2015

Question 1 to the reader: Does parsimony imply a shift in the burden of proof?

This question has been an important one in the quest for an axiom that embodies and completes the philosophy of Marconomics.
After a great deal of study of parsimony (and the related Ockhams Razor), I find the answer to question 1 to the reader to be unequivocally *YES*. If everyone could just believe me, this would make my book much shorter, and my attacks on the pointlessness of favouring parsimony much more convincing.

Broadly, however, I find there to be a complete denial that any such shifts in the burden of proof take place in all the facets of science where I have discovered the poisoned fruits of parsimony.

One early point of research that flagged parsimony as a bugbear rather than an asset to science was with the axiom of geogenesis in the study of abiogenesis. It appeared to me that there was considerably more evidence for exogenesis (as in the weak form of panspermia, where the Earth was seeded with single celled organisms from space with as yet unknown providence) than geogenesis.
In digging for the explanation as to why exogenesis had the burden of proof seemingly attached to it, while geogenesis seemingly does not, parsimony is my prime suspect.

Three questions to the reader:
1)Is parsimony explicitly or implicitly used in this case?
2)Has it shifted the burden of proof?
3)Does it matter?

The main defence I have heard is that even in the (unlikely) case that abiogenesis did not occur on Earth, it has to have occurred on a planet similar to the early Earth.

I have discussed this over and over as to how this defence is "science" in any shape or form. Eg. What observations lead to a calculation of probability, and how an unknown process can have a known locale, etc.

Towards the end of my formulation of the alternative of Marcomony (at least as a very precise scientific concept in my own mind), I went back to this early affront of parsimony being the reason panspermia is wholesale rejected, and realised that a whole new science can be born with the simplest of keys being the detection and rejection of parsimony wherever it is found.

Ironically, however, there is no perception of a problem, and radical adversaries (eg. Between panspermia advocates and the mainstream exobiology community) cling to parsimony in one form or another and are equally ignoring its "poisoned fruits" that I so readily calculate based on the removal of the burden of proof. Proponents of a pet theory are generally advocating that their own theory is the one that should have the burden of proof removed (perhaps by arguments that entail it having less parameters or more elegant solutions) rather than pushing for a level "proof-burden" playing field, which Marcomony advocates.

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