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Dennis Hackethal addressed criticism #2533.
#2533·Benjamin Davies revised 4 days agoIf “good” is considered the same as “not bad” doesn’t that close the gap between Deutsch and Popper? (Using Edwin’s conception of good and bad.)
If “bad” = “contains known flaws”,
and “not bad” = “contains no known flaws”,
why can’t “good” = “contains no known flaws” too?I can see no reason that “good” means anything more than “not bad”.
Similarly, “hard to vary” would just be an equivalent of “not easy to vary”.
We could try to save Deutsch’s terminology this way, sure. But I don’t think that’s what he means. He sees room for different gradations of ‘good’. For example, from BoI ch. 9:
[W]e should choose between policies not on the basis of their origin, but according to how good they are as explanations: how hard to vary.