Douglas de Lacey wrote:
wrote:
Mary Fisher wrote:

I sometimes wonder why people who know everything bother coming on news
groups and trying to prove people wrong when they could be saving the world
:-)


Try Popper. While it's not universally true/accepted it's a fairly
good way of deciding whether things are factual/useful or not.

Popper surmised that one cannot prove that things aren't true, he said
that 'truths' which aren't falsifiable are pointless.

Err, that's your self-contradiction, not Popper's! Did you mean "that
things are true"?

I don't think anyone is trying to prove that dowsing is wrong/untrue,
that's not really possible.

It's only that which can be proved to be true is generally useful.

That's a bit of a travesty of Popper. You *can't* prove things
(hypotheses) are true. You *can* prove them false (hence falsifiability)
and thereby make better hypotheses.

You are absolutely right, I think I lost my way very thoroughly in
there somewhere! Thanks for correcting my nonsense.

--
Chris Green