Such a clear and obvious fact was completely opaque in my mind until i realized it. it shattered a part of my mind - actually.

this is an extremely cruel truth for all the theories. cruel because all the untestable theories share the same fate of being worthless in light of this. i do not think truth has liberated those poor theories. in addition, being called worthless is just so damning for them. it is worse than death but death is a blessing so, i would call it an unforgivable curse to call a theory worthless.

no theory is good or bad. i don’t deny proven theories are good by default. but it still leaves a bad/sad feeling in me that any theory should be classed as “worthless”. a theory is a theory. the worth of a theory shouldn’t not be measured with its usability. we don’t do that with humans (technically we do).

just how strict is this condition. how constrained. in face of a collection of theories, one can only consider those which have some testability. how many such theories would exist in any given set of theories? just like that - poof - all those untestable theories are dropped out of further consideration. those theories do not enjoy even a small atom of experimentations/observations. the theory would be starved to its death when it will be forgotten. maybe being called worthless embarks the setting of a theory. still seems harsh.

before some headway is made. let me define thinkers. a thinker is one who proposes a theory to explain a phenomenon.

This fact has a powerful virtue to the thinkers. thinkers not only can exhasutively reduce the number of theories based on this simple fact and additionally, but can also do so with complete confidence. since in case some untestable theory is indeed the ground truth, then thinkers could never have explained the phenomenon the theory confesses to explain anyway. it would then be impossible for the theory to be proven. in other words, thinkers can not explain that phenomenon and can abandon all hope and effort in doing it.

but are all untestable theories really worthless? what if some untestable theory at some point in time is untestable, but becomes testable in future (due to some advancements). in doing so, it ceases to be worthless. then is it really fair for such a theory to be called “worthless” at some point in time? maybe this is the (or one of the) reason(s) i feel a bit bad about them.

what if such a theory was not untestable to begin with?

testability of any theory depends on experimentations and observations. advancements in any one of them leads to advancements in testability. then by some sufficient advancements in experimentations/observations, any theory will be testable, which naturally implies no theory is worthless (ansatz iff). of course, required advancements are not densed in time. at any time, some theories will be testable and some will not be. and since new theories are added to the grand superset of theories that even after a long time, there will be some testable theories and some untestable (hence worthless). Otherwise no theory will be worthless (how wonderful would that be)! those new theories which will be added may or may not be testable at their time of inception. only the untestable theories that are conceived help untestable theories not going extinct.

on one hand, we have the power-up this fact provides, on other hand, (1) we perform the unforgivable act of calling a theory worthless (2) we may regret this act in future when the theory becomes testable because of advancements. it then depends on any individual’s cost-benefit analysis.

what if required advancements in experimentations/observations can never be realized? would it be forgiving to call a theory worthless since such a theory would be untestable at all times. would it be morally correct of thinkers to deny any amount of experimentations/observations to such a theory.