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shimadon t1_j9in5h2 wrote

Reply to comment by HumanistHippy in How did Paul Dirac predict the existence of a positron before the actual discovery? by bazongaenthusiast

Good answer, a quick correction: even if the math is correct, it doesn't necessarily mean that everything the math predicts has to be real. That's indeed what happened with Dirac, but it doesn't have to be true for all mathematical models of the physical world.

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Holiday_Document4592 t1_j9jnxdn wrote

So how do we distinguish between the math that has predictive capability and the one that doesn't?

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mfb- t1_j9ka5v6 wrote

We run experiments to check.

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tpolakov1 t1_j9lef5p wrote

If a theory predicts something and we don't see it in an experiment, then it was a wrong prediction, or a wrong theory.

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