The Only Unbreakable Law [video]
A law that doesn&#x27;t make predictions isn&#x27;t a law. A law that is not falsifiable isn&#x27;t a law. It is an unscientific belief.<p>It&#x27;s truly incredible to me that people, like the person in this video, can speak with such confidence about how, for example from this video, &quot;if we look at an org chart for an organization, and we look at the structure of the products that it produces, we would expect them to basically just be collapses of each other [i.e. a homomorphism]&quot;. Also known as <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Conway's_law" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Conway's_law</a><p>A sincere person in search of truth asks questions like the following when they encounter a claim:<p>- can we think of circumstances where this law is <i>not</i> true?<p>- can we test this claim to show that it is true?<p>- can a test be devised which would falsify this claim?<p>- if this claim is true, what are the mechanisms of action for the claim?<p>- if this claim is true, are there any contradictions that would arise with other things we know are true?<p>Using the same metaphor used in this video, if the currently recognized law of gravitation (General Relativity) made predictions which were different than what is observed, then that law is wrong. And a scientist would adjust their law to reality and be more than willing to point out the gaps of explanation in our law of gravitation (which they do).<p>If we&#x27;re serious about Computer Science (and Software Engineering) being a field in pursuit of truth, we should be as rigorous and critical as other fields of science and engineering when it comes to making claims.