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TRACTABLE FALSIFIABILITY

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 May 2015

Ronen Gradwohl  and
Eran Shmaya
Ronen Gradwohl
Affiliation:
Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, 2001 Sheridan Road, Evanston, IL 60208, USA. Email: r-gradwohl@kellogg.northwestern.edu. URL: http://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/faculty/Gradwohl/index.html.
Eran Shmaya
Affiliation:
School of Mathematical Sciences, Tel Aviv University, Ramat Aviv, Tel Aviv 6997801, Israel and Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, 2001 Sheridan Road, Evanston, IL 60208, USA. Email: erans@post.tau.ac.il. URL: http://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/faculty/directory/shmaya_eran.aspx.
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Abstract:

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.

Keywords

Falsifiabilitycomputational complexity

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Type
Articles
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Economics & Philosophy , Volume 31 , Issue 2 , July 2015 , pp. 259 - 274
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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