Noah Smith made a stir with his claim that historians make theories without empirical backing — something I think is a bit of a category error. I mean even if historian's "theories" truly are "it happened in the past, so this can happen again", that the study of history gives us a sense of the available state space of human civilization, then that observation is such a small piece of the available state space as to carry zero probability on its own. You'd have to resort to some kind of historical anthropic principle that the kind of states humans have seen in the past are the more likely ones when you have a range of theoretical outcomes comparable to the string theory landscape [1]. But that claim is so dependent on its assumption it could not rise to the idea of a theory in empirical science.
Is the credibility revolution credible?
Is the credibility revolution credible?
Is the credibility revolution credible?
Noah Smith made a stir with his claim that historians make theories without empirical backing — something I think is a bit of a category error. I mean even if historian's "theories" truly are "it happened in the past, so this can happen again", that the study of history gives us a sense of the available state space of human civilization, then that observation is such a small piece of the available state space as to carry zero probability on its own. You'd have to resort to some kind of historical anthropic principle that the kind of states humans have seen in the past are the more likely ones when you have a range of theoretical outcomes comparable to the string theory landscape [1]. But that claim is so dependent on its assumption it could not rise to the idea of a theory in empirical science.