Is It Theoretically Or Hypothetically Speaking Which Is More Correct

What does it mean to say theoretically speaking?

"Theoretically speaking," and its more scientifically correct cousin "hypothetically speaking," are used to introduce an informal question, often one that might seem silly or out of place, in order to open debate on the matter or get people thinking, or to answer with a best guess based on some domain knowledge: “Theoretically speaking, what if we used frog DNA to fill in dinosaurs’ missing genes?” “If we can get a gene splicer, then theoretically speaking, it should work.”Sometimes it’s a serious question, sometimes it’s just to introduce a random off-the-wall stray thought (the bread and butter of a ditz in sitcoms). “Hypothetically speaking, if we switch to cubic time, does that mean Time Cube is all true?” You can sometimes leave off the “speaking” without changing the meaning, for simplicity.Because in popular use, theory means “hypothesis,” both forms mean pretty much the exact same thing — unless you’re talking to a scientist, in which case “theoretically speaking” might actually mean looking for a solid theoretical basis, rather than a best guess.A common subversion is to use the phrase to obliquely ask about the consequences of a disaster that's already happened: "Theoretically, how bad would it be if I filled the tank with gasoline instead of diesel?” “Really bad, why?” “Errr….” After a beat, cue white faces and a rush to salvage the disaster. Extremely common in sitcoms, but played with in all kinds of media and real life.

How do you define "hypothetically speaking'?

Most of the abstract/scientific words in English come from Latin/Greek (French).Etymology/origin/truth of hypothetically comes via Latin/Greek hypothesis: foundation (theory).Theoretically speaking (this) is possible, but empirically not necessarily observable, technically/currently possible (not excluded).There might be localised variations/understandings of the phrase/synonyms, but this should be the essence.

What is the difference between theoretically speaking and hypothetically speaking?

The exact same difference that’s there is between a Theory & a Hypothesis…Lets proceed to understand:Theory(definition):: A coherent statement or set of ideas that explains observed facts or phenomena, or which sets out the laws and principles of something known or observed; a hypothesis confirmed by observation, experiment etc.Hence:: A group of linked ideas intended to explain something and confirmed by observation, experiments or tests. A theory provides a framework for explaining observations. The explanations are based on assumptions. From the assumptions follows a number of possible hypotheses. They can be tested to provide support for, or challenge, the theory….Hypothesis(definition):: an idea or explanation for something that is based on known facts but has not yet been proved OR or scientific problem that can be tested by further observation, investigation and/or experimentation.Hence::An assumption taken to be true for the purpose of argument or investigation...simply the antecedent of a condition/statement or study…a proposition made as a basis for reasoning,….So a person can choose to describe and present using either approaches…and in doing so..When using Theory…it’s Theoretically Speaking…almost a confirmationWhen following a Hypothesis it’s Hypothetically speaking…still largely an assumptionHope this helps…!!

Hypothetically speaking, what types of interesting geographical phenomena are theoretically possible on Earth, but simply don't occur due to the lack of certain elements?

The natural nuclear reactor that happened only a few times (if that’s what you mean)Basically the right collection of things come together and the same process that happens in a nuclear reactor starts happening naturally, of its own accord, in the wild. Nature's Nuclear Reactors: The 2-Billion-Year-Old Natural Fission Reactors in Gabon, Western Africa

Hypothetically speaking, after a sufficiently large time span, could all the possible questions in the universe be asked on Quora, thus creating an exhaustive collection of all questions ever asked and that will/may/could be asked?

I'm going to have to disagree with Jimmy Wales on this one:  You can't ask "Is the number x cool?" for every real number x, because there's no such thing as an infinitely long Quora question.Let's suppose that you can write arbitrarily long (but not infinitely long) Quora questions.  That means that your question can be as long as you want, but it has to end at some point.  Quora questions can also only be written using a finite character set (let's say all UTF-8 characters).  That means we can write all potential Quora questions in lexicographical order:  First we write all of the 1-character Quora questions in alphabetical order, then all of the 2-character Quora questions in alphabetical order, and so on, to infinity.  This order gives us a bijection between the natural numbers and the set of Quora questions, because we can just map any natural number n to the nth Quora question in the list --- so we could potentially imagine a database that does contain all askable Quora questions.This is the same as asking whether there are countably many syntactically correct C programs; you might similarly imagine that you could have a program that printed any real number, but the same argument applies since C programs are still just finite-length ASCII strings.  You can't make the same argument for the real numbers, though, because there are real numbers with infinitely long decimal expansions.  So if you try to enumerate all of the 1-digit, then 2-digit, then 3-digit real numbers (and so on), you'll never write down 1/3 = 0.333... or any other number with a non-terminating decimal expansion.That said, the question "Is the number x cool?" is a well-defined question for every real number x.  But that doesn't mean we can't enumerate all of the infinitely-many Quora questions (we can).  It does mean, in some sense, that not all questions can be asked on Quora, since we can imagine at least as many questions as real numbers, but the set of potential Quora questions (that is, finite-length UTF-8 strings) is countably infinite which is a strictly smaller cardinality than the real numbers.

What does it mean when someone says "hypothetically speaking"?

Hypothetically speaking, the use of “hypothetically speaking…” means “In theory…” or “Pretend for a second that…”Typically, it comes at the beginning of the sentence, before a scenario which hasn’t happened and may not even be possible, and it asks the listener to pretend for a moment that the scenario is true before answering a question.Example: “Hypothetically speaking, if there were aliens on Mars, would they be well-read?”That is what it literally means. However, in context, it may mean someone has already done something and wants feedback from others before confessing.“Hypothetically speaking, if someone broke his coffee mug, would he be mad?”