Ideas and hypotheses
DraftThis section holds speculation, kept separate from everything else so that it is never mistaken for established material. An idea recorded here is explicitly not a claim.
Why keep them at all
Ideas are lost otherwise. A connection noticed while reading, an argument that seems to follow from two things learned separately, a suspicion that a widely repeated figure is wrong: none survives more than a few days unwritten.
Keeping them also makes it possible to be wrong on the record, which is the only way to calibrate. An idea recorded, pursued and abandoned teaches something about judgement that an idea quietly forgotten does not.
Structure
| Field | Content |
|---|---|
| Idea | One sentence, stated as a claim rather than a topic |
| Why it might hold | The reasoning, honestly, including how strong it is |
| What it would imply | What follows if it is true; this is how importance is judged |
| What would falsify it | A specific observation, calculation or source that would settle it |
| Prior art | Whether anyone has already considered it, checked before investing effort |
| Status | Speculation, being tested, supported, refuted, or abandoned |
| Last update | Dated |
The falsification field
This is the field that makes the section useful rather than a collection of musings.
An idea with no conceivable disconfirming evidence is not a hypothesis. Writing down what would falsify it forces the idea to be stated precisely enough to be wrong, and frequently reveals that it was too vague to be either right or wrong.
| Idea as first stated | After the falsification test |
|---|---|
| Orbital manufacturing will become important | Unfalsifiable. Important when, at what launch cost, for which product? |
| ZBLAN fibre made in orbit becomes economic below a launch cost of X dollars per kilogram | Falsifiable: compute the crossover from fibre value, production rate and return cost |
| Small launch is not a viable standalone business | Falsifiable: examine whether any dedicated small launch provider sustains profitability on launch alone |
The second column is what belongs here. The first column is a topic.
Prior art
Checking whether an idea is already known is worth doing before investing in it, and the honest expectation is that it usually is.
Most ideas that occur while learning a field have occurred to people working in it, and the literature usually contains either the idea or a good reason it does not work. Finding that is not a disappointment; it is a much faster route to understanding than rediscovering it slowly.
The valuable case is the idea that has been considered and rejected for reasons that no longer hold. Several concepts on this site are in that category: space-based solar power and orbital manufacturing were both correctly rejected on the economics of their era, and the relevant question is whether the economics have changed. See Space-based solar power.
Recording refutation
An idea that turned out to be wrong should be kept, with the reason.
The keep it box matters. A record containing only ideas that worked has a survivor bias that makes it useless for judging one’s own reliability, and the refuted entries are where the calibration comes from.
Labelling
Anything in this section carries speculative status by virtue of being here, and that is not sufficient on its own. An idea that is linked from elsewhere, or quoted, loses its context.
So each entry states its status in its own text, not only in its location. An entry that reads as a confident claim will be read as one regardless of which directory it sits in.
What does not belong here
| Not this | Where it goes |
|---|---|
| Something to look up | Learning notes |
| A precise unresolved question | Questions I am exploring |
| A claim already supported by evidence | The relevant subject section |
| A calculation not yet done | Calculations |
| A general enthusiasm | Nowhere; it is not an idea until it is a claim |
References
Entries cite their own sources. This page is a convention.