> "Not even wrong" is a phrase often used to describe pseudoscience or bad science. It describes an argument or explanation that purports to be scientific but uses faulty reasoning or speculative premises, which can be neither affirmed nor denied and thus cannot be discussed rigorously and scientifically. The phrase "not even wrong" is synonymous with "unfalsifiable".[0][1]
I'm not sure "not even wrong" actually means the same thing as "unfalsifiable" like Wikipedia claims? I thought "not even wrong" means the asker is so confused that their question doesn't make sense. As I understand it, "ghosts exist" (or even "the universe is infinite") may well be impossible to falsify, but it doesn't signal any sort of confusion on the part of the asker. But if the statement was "ghosts exist because the universe is infinite", then I thought that would fall into the "not even wrong" bucket.
I understand “not even wrong” to be synonymous with unfalsifiable in the sense that the statement being described as such is not a truth claim, or is otherwise not a valid formal statement or claim, such that the scientific method is not able to be deployed to consider its validity.
> In religion, a truth claim is an assertion that the belief system holds to be true; however, from the existence of an assertion that the belief system holds to be true, it does not follow that the assertion is true. For example, a truth claim in Judaism is that only one God exists. Conflicting truth claims between different religions can be a cause of religious conflict. The theory of truth claims has been advanced by John Hick.
I think that your example is something I would consider “beside the point,” whereas the flavor of “not even wrong” to me seems to describe a statement or claim that has truthiness[0] rather than a truth value[1].
A statement which is not even wrong is one that can’t or isn’t expressed properly as a logical assertion or argument but rather asserted without evidence or in such a way that it is made to seem inherently or intuitively obvious. Such a statement isn't argued for or against properly or logically, or isn’t otherwise properly expressed or derived, or a statement or claim which falls short of making a concrete point or argument which can be dismissed or validated on the basis of evidence or logical argument.
> Truthiness is the belief or assertion that a particular statement is true based on the intuition or perceptions of some individual or individuals, without regard to evidence, logic, intellectual examination, or facts. Truthiness can range from ignorant assertions of falsehoods to deliberate duplicity or propaganda intended to sway opinions.
> In logic and mathematics, a truth value, sometimes called a logical value, is a value indicating the relation of a proposition to truth, which in classical logic has only two possible values (true or false).