Episode 85 - Popper’s concept of what a problem is

Episode 85 - Popper’s concept of what a problem is

Author: Bart Vanderhaegen June 13, 2021 Duration: 12:34

According to Karl Popper: a problem is a conflict between ideas

Think = solving problems = growing knowledge (knowledge containing less and less conflicts)

Thinking is not : finding more arguments for your case, that is static. Knowledge doesn’t grow when you do that

So Popper was after the growth of knowledge all the way

  • Our knowledge is never final, never confirmed, and given our fallibility we can always improve and grow our knowledge

Naive falsification: "throwing out knowledge when it is falsified" is the exact opposite ... so cannot have been the aim of Popper


Bart Vanderhaegen hosts Rapid Idea Improvement, a podcast that digs into a powerful and practical question: how do ideas actually get better? Instead of staying in the abstract, it applies the principles of knowledge growth-particularly those from thinkers like Karl Popper and David Deutsch-to the messy, real-world domains of business, management, and economics, while also reaching into fields like physics for broader insight. Each episode is an exploration of critical rationalism in action, examining how we can systematically criticize and refine our thinking to solve problems more effectively. You’ll hear discussions that treat business challenges not as puzzles with fixed answers, but as opportunities for evolutionary idea improvement, where bold conjectures and rigorous error-correction drive progress. This isn't about motivational tips or surface-level analysis; it's about building a deeper framework for understanding how knowledge expands, and then using that framework to make your own thinking more potent and adaptable. The conversations in this podcast are for anyone who suspects that the way we approach problems-in leadership, strategy, or innovation-can be fundamentally upgraded. By weaving together epistemology with practical application, the show aims to provide listeners with a genuinely useful toolkit for accelerating the development of their most important ideas.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 100

Rapid Idea Improvement
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