Hacker News Reader

Funny. But don't use the word technically, because that's factually incorrect. A bug spray need not kill every mosquito in existence to prove that it has 100% fatality rate on mosquitoes.

View on HN

It depends on your model - no number of mosquitos killed can deductively prove (à la mathematical proof) that a bug spray will kill all mosquitoes.

It can at best inductively prove it - the scientific approach, or alternately do what you called '100% rate' (the hidden words there being 'so far').

Avoid use of the word "prove" in a discussion of science and scientific theories. Science can't prove theories true, it can only prove theories false. Philosopher David Hume expressed this best: “No amount of observations of white swans can allow the inference that all swans are white, but the observation of a single black swan is sufficient to refute that conclusion.”

Yes use suggests not proves

Thanks for this. Mea culpa.

Your spray had better kill 100% of the mosquitos it's sprayed on, though. And 100% of humans have been "sprayed with" life.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com