[gwd]

> If beliefs have no way to be verified, what does it mean to say one still may be true.

It may not be able to be verified, but it can often be falsified. Suppose I believe that all bridges are safe for me because there is a swarm of fairies following me around holding up the bridges. And suppose you believe that no bridges are safe between the hours of 2 and 3 am, because the gods have so decreed. And suppose we both come to a bridge at 2am.

If I walk over the bridge and it collapses, it falsifies my belief that fairies will always hold up bridges for me, but it doesn't prove your belief that the gods have promised universal collapse for bridge-walking at 2am. On the other hand, if I walk over the bridge and it doesn't collapse, it falsifies your belief that the gods have promised universal collapse for bridge-walking at 2am, but does not prove my belief that fairies will always hold up bridges for me.

"All models are wrong, but some models are useful."

[gwd]

As a corollary to this - a principle I've accepted goes like this: "If you don't know what evidence could show your belief to be false, you don't really know what it means for your belief to be true."

For all of our important beliefs -- about people, politics, religion, whatever -- it's always important that we ask ourselves, "How would I know if I was wrong?"

[wsy]

It seems that falsifying would provide an escape route. Unfortunately it doesn't, because you would first have to establish - without a doubt - the truth of the contradicting statement. That works ok-ish for collapsing bridges, but it breaks down for less direct observations, e.g., when reading experimental data from a computer screen, collected to refute a Physics theory.