Need a simple exercise to teach the principle of falsification?

I just saw the following video and thought it would make for a great classroom exercise in critical thinking:

It’s such an elegant way of demonstrating not only the principle of falsification, but also how attachment to our own theories or explanations can distract us from productive lines of inquiry. I’m going to use it next chance I get!

Dan

Dan is the glorious editor-in-chief of School of Doubt. He holds a PhD in historical musicology and is now studying Higher Education at a major Canadian university. Outside the academy, Dan performs stand-up comedy when he's not busy playing JRPGs with his cat, Roy. He occasionally tweets as @incontrariomotu and blogs about geeky stuff at The Otaku Skeptic.

1 Comment

I guessed his rule pretty quickly, but this sort of thing IS a classic demonstration. Another good rule would be “always goes up or always goes down”, where people would have to propose a set like “1 3 2”, or further out of the box concepts to try to get the answer.