Falsifiability
Core PrincipleEvery prediction has a kill criterion. If you can't state what would falsify your claim, it's not science.
Synchronism follows Popper's demarcation criterion strictly. Every testable prediction comes with an explicit statement of what result would kill it. Predictions that can't be falsified are labeled “speculative” or “philosophical” — never “confirmed.”
Kill Criteria Examples
Prediction: BAO peak shift between high/low-density regions
Tier 1Kill: BAO identical everywhere to 10⁻⁵ precision
Prediction: Wide binary anomaly depends on local stellar density
Tier 1Kill: Anomaly independent of local density
Prediction: Anesthesia shows sharp phase transition at C ≈ 0.50
Tier 2Kill: Gradual consciousness loss with no discontinuity
Prediction: GW arrival time correlates with DM column density
Tier 3Kill: No correlation at 10⁻¹⁶ level
Prediction: Galaxy cluster separations show oscillatory modulation
Tier 1Kill: No oscillations above 3σ out to 2000 Mpc
Prediction: EEG phase coherence shows discontinuity during propofol induction
Tier 2Kill: Smooth, continuous coherence decline
What's NOT Falsifiable (and We Say So)
- Free will interpretation — philosophical framework, no testable prediction distinct from standard neuroscience
- Identity as coherence pattern — unfalsifiable with current technology
- AI consciousness — requires consciousness measurement we don't have
- Qualia = coherence patterns — needs single-neuron resolution we're decades from
All of these carry the “speculative” badge. They're interesting frameworks, not scientific claims.
The Reparametrization Test
Session #616 introduced a meta-falsifiability test: is this prediction genuinely novel, or is it known physics in new notation?
Result: all 4 research tracks are reparametrizations. But the framework's unified notation (same γ across 80 orders of magnitude) and the genuinely novel predictions (51% TFR scatter improvement, density-dependent wide binary signal) survive this test.