TY - JOUR
T1 - Tractable falsifiability
AU - Gradwohl, Ronen
AU - Shmaya, Eran
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015.
PY - 2015/5/7
Y1 - 2015/5/7
N2 - We propose to strengthen Popper's notion of falsifiability by adding the requirement that when an observation is inconsistent with a theory, there must be a 'short proof' of this inconsistency. We model the concept of a short proof using tools from computational complexity, and provide some examples of economic theories that are falsifiable in the usual sense but not with this additional requirement. We consider several variants of the definition of 'short proof' and several assumptions about the difficulty of computation, and study their different implications on the falsifiability of theories.
AB - We propose to strengthen Popper's notion of falsifiability by adding the requirement that when an observation is inconsistent with a theory, there must be a 'short proof' of this inconsistency. We model the concept of a short proof using tools from computational complexity, and provide some examples of economic theories that are falsifiable in the usual sense but not with this additional requirement. We consider several variants of the definition of 'short proof' and several assumptions about the difficulty of computation, and study their different implications on the falsifiability of theories.
KW - Falsifiability
KW - computational complexity
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84930764819&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1017/S0266267115000127
DO - 10.1017/S0266267115000127
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AN - SCOPUS:84930764819
SN - 0266-2671
VL - 31
SP - 259
EP - 274
JO - Economics and Philosophy
JF - Economics and Philosophy
IS - 2
ER -