How To Tell A Real Law From A Fake One?

When was the last time you believed someone quoting a so-called scientific law? With the amount of misleading information increasing by the day, telling a real law apart from a fake one is a necessary skill. You don’t need to be a scientist to tell them apart. All you will need is scientific awareness of certain terminology, and you will be able to differentiate between what is legit and what is not.

In this article, I’ll guide you through the necessary terminology that will help you understand what a law is. Eventually, you will be able to identify legit laws in science. We’ll start with observation and fact, proceed to hypothesis and experimentation, and finally cover theory and law. But before we start with the terminology, we need to differentiate between the common language and the scientific language.

This essay is supported by Generatebg

Common Language Vs. Scientific Language

The first thing to note about all the terms I’ll be discussing in this article is that they have a scientific interpretation as well as a common interpretation (respectively). They are not the same.

For example, when someone says, “I have a theory about how the balloon popped.”, they probably refer to a hunch or a guess. This is acceptable and implied in common language. Whereas in science, a theory is something different and more complex (I’ll elaborate later). The closest scientific word that can be used to describe the guess or hunch about the balloon is a hypothesis.

In the common language, a law is something that is absolute and is often true by virtue of its existence. Whereas in science, a law is rigid, but not absolute, and it is subject to experimentation and testing. So, a scientific law is never true by virtue of its existence alone. There are a few more finer details about law that I will cover further into the article.

Now that we have covered the basic differences between the common language and the scientific language, let us proceed with the scientific method of formulating laws (and theories).

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Observation and Fact

In the scientific world, whenever someone notes a significant event, an observation is made. An observation is subjective by nature, meaning that each observer could perceive the same event differently.

If the event garners interest from enough people, the community works towards establishing facts. Facts essentially aim to achieve relative objectivity. If enough people report the same observation, then the observation turns less subjective and more objective. By collective confirmation, it eventually turns into a fact. Perfect objectivity is arguably an impossible challenge because of philosophical reasons (that are beyond the scope of this article).

In science, a fact is close to what is referred to as truth in the common language. Examples of facts could be ‘objects are pulled towards the earth’, ‘global temperatures have been increasing over the years’, etc.

Hypothesis and Experimentation

Once facts have been established from observations, the scientific community focuses on understanding causation. In other words, the focus now turns towards explaining why and how exactly the observed phenomenon occurs.

To do this, people usually start with an idea that tentatively explains the phenomenon observed. This idea is known as a hypothesis. Now, a hypothesis may or may not be true. The only way to find out is to test the hypothesis.

Usually, hypotheses are tested using designed experiments. Each level of the hypothesis is then proved or disproved incrementally. This process is essentially looped until the hypothesis is sufficiently refined to proceed towards a theory.

Theory and Law

Theory and Law are sometimes used interchangeably. In science, these are two separate terms. There is also a notion that if proven sufficiently, a theory eventually graduates and becomes a law. This is also not the case in science.

A theory aims to explain why the phenomenon occurs, whereas a law aims to merely describe the phenomenon given the initial and running (boundary) conditions.

A scientific theory goes into detail and tries to connect the dots and explain the phenomenon from a fundamental view. On the other hand, a scientific law aims to provide a compact model for describing the phenomenon. The scientific law is often mathematical in nature. If inputs are fed into this model, the law gives a certain output. There is no deep causal explanation in the formulation of a law. However, its output and functioning are sufficiently and rigorously proved to be the truth using experiments and observations.

Both theory and law originate from the scientific process of testing hypotheses and experimentation, but their roles are separate. The only commonality between them is that they are both used to predict the phenomenon that they correspond to.

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Evolution and Change

Theory

In the common language, a theory is not given much weightage. An attitude of “It’s just a theory.” is not so uncommon. In science, a theory is quite an advanced construct that carries quite a significant weightage.

You see, a scientific theory is something that started as a hypothesis and has been continuously under attack. It is always open to being disproved and challenged (the only way science can progress).

Because of this, a theory that has stood the test of time is regarded with a lot of scientific reputation and worth. Examples of such theories include evolution theory, climate change theory (yes, it is a theory), big bang theory, etc.

You could say that a scientific theory is open and subject to evolution upon sufficient evidence. An example of such evolution can be seen with Einstein’s theory of relativity which evolved from the Newtonian theory of mechanics.

Law

In common language, a law is something that is considered absolute. In science, it is a little bit more flexible than that. While a scientific theory is open and welcomes change and evolution, a scientific law is very resistant to change and evolution. But it is not completely closed.

If a law evolves or if it is being disproved, it means that there has been a remarkable change or discovery about the phenomenon involved. Such remarkable change could indicate a fundamental shift in how we understand science, as was the case with Newtonian laws of Gravity. You can see the modern form of the law below.

Having covered sufficient terminologies and how their interpretations differ in science compared to the common language, let us go ahead and see a couple of examples of so-called laws.

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Examples of Fake Laws

When someone mentions so-called laws such as “Law of Attraction” or “Moore’s Law”, they are typically understood as absolute events in the common language.

Law of Attraction

In scientific terms, the Law of Attraction is not a law, but a fallacy that suffers strongly from biases such as the hindsight bias and (even worse) tautological definitions. In logical sciences, tautology is defined as follows:

“A logical combination of sentences that is always true, regardless of the truth or falsity of the constituent sentences, is known as a tautology. “

– Rudy Rucker (Mathematician and computer scientist)

Here is an example:

“By visualizing positive thoughts, you can manifest positive outcomes in real life. If you are not manifesting positive outcomes in real life, your thoughts are not sufficiently positive.”

There is no way to disprove these statements. They can only be right.

In other words, the ‘law of attraction’ is defined in such a way that it cannot be proved wrong. Imagine playing a game with someone who has rigged the game in their favour, regardless of your skill level in the game. In short, the game is rigged. The question is: who is the loser?

Moore’s Law

As for Moore’s law, it is merely an observation about transistors that has been extrapolated into the future. The observation was originally made by Gordon Moore. It states that the number of transistors in an integrated circuit doubles every two years.

When it was made out to be a law around 1975, the transistor size was 6 micrometres. Over the years, the prediction made by Moore has indeed held, and we expect transistors of a size range of 2 nanometres by 2024. Below 1 nanometre, we approach the size of atoms (literal atoms!).

How can the number of transistors then keep on doubling? Well, the so-called Moore’s law is likely to run into limitations from actual physical laws of nature.

Besides, Moore’s law does not meet the scientific rigour that is expected of a law. To investigate further, we need to ask the following questions:

1. Is Moore’s law subject to experimentation? — Not quite!

2. Is it repeatable given the same inputs? — No!

3. Is it precisely measurable? — No!

The answer to the first question about experimentation is ‘not quite’. This is because Moore’s law is defined in such a manner that it depends upon future technology (two years into the future) to test its statement.

The answer to the second question is ‘no’. Moore’s law is a time-dependent statement, and therefore, any experiment relating to this statement can only be done once, and cannot be repeated. It can only be done once because each experiment involves the output of a global industry!

The answer to the question relating to precise measurement is also ‘no’. The so-called law is so poorly formulated that it has the word ‘about’ in its definition, which makes the statement imprecise, and any consequent measurement imprecise as well.

“The number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit doubles about every two years.”

– Moore’s Law

The unfortunate thing is that the original observation from Gordon Moore has merits. However, to be scientifically considered a law, it is ill-defined.

Moore’s law is arguably inspired by a higher class of laws known as Power-Law, which is actually a legit scientific law. A power-law is a purely mathematical relation (of the form y = a*(x^k) + ɛ) that can be mapped to phenomena that exhibit this mathematical behaviour (and there are plenty of those in all fields).

But when a power-law approach is specifically used to predict phenomena indefinitely, ignoring parameters from physical laws of nature and experimental requirements, it loses its legitimacy as a law.

In a 2015 interview, Gordon Moore made a remark on his original 1965 article as follows:

“……I just did a wild extrapolation saying it’s going to continue to double every year for the next 10 years.”

– Gordon Moore (Source: IEEE Spectrum)

This statement should speak for itself. I quote it here just to be fair to Moore’s genius. His intentions were not to prove his observation to be a law. This law is a product of common language seeping into science.

What Next?

Having come this far, you are equipped with enough terminology and awareness to tell apart what a scientific law is and what is not. You no longer have to take things for granted or as absolute truth.

Science is about constantly asking questions. The intention is not to poke holes everywhere, but to constantly question one’s own correctness in understanding phenomena. There is nothing ill about being wrong. We should embrace being wrong. Only on the other side of ‘wrong’ can we progress towards ‘right’. That is the scientific way!

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Further reading that might interest you: The Strong Law of Small Numbers, Why Do You See Mirrors Flipping Words? and Are We Living In A Simulation?