The Knowledge Machine: How Irrationality Created Modern Science
by Michael Strevens · 12 Oct 2020
of Berlin, and expelled many of its Jewish professors and staff, Reichenbach included. “Then,” Reichenbach is said to have observed, “I understood at last the problem of induction.” REICHENBACH, POPPER, AND many like-minded refugees fleeing the mayhem and malevolence of Central Europe between the wars promoted an ideal of the scientist as
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now regarded by many as the “father of neuroendocrinology” for his theory of hormone-driven communication within the brain. 22 “I understood at last the problem of induction”: The story is told by Ronald Giere in his book Science without Laws. He attributes it to the philosopher Andreas Kamlah, who, he reports, “knew
Data Mining: Concepts, Models, Methods, and Algorithms
by Mehmed Kantardzić · 2 Jan 2003 · 721pp · 197,134 words
that are important guidelines in a practical implementation of data-mining techniques. Let us briefly explain two of these useful principles. First, when solving a problem of inductive learning based on finite information, one should keep in mind the following general commonsense principle: Do not attempt to solve a specified problem by indirectly
The Fabric of Reality
by David Deutsch · 31 Mar 2012 · 511pp · 139,108 words
to sequences of logical deductions from the evidence, what does it amount to? Why should we accept its conclusions? {58} This is known as the 'problem of induction'. The name derives from what was, for most of the history of science, the prevailing theory of how science works. The theory was that there
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adopt our new set of theories in preference to the old set. That is why science, regarded as explanation-seeking and problem-solving, raises no 'problem of induction'. There is no mystery about why we should feel compelled tentatively to accept an explanation when it is the best explanation we can think of
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solipsism The theory that only one mind exists and that what appears to be external reality is only a dream taking place in that mind. problem of induction Since scientific theories cannot be logically justified by observation, what does justify them? induction A fictitious process by which general theories were supposed to be
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ibout the nature of reality. Yet these conclusions cannot be deduced by pure logic from the observations. So what makes them compelling? This is the 'problem of induction'. According to inductivism, ncientific theories are discovered by extrapolating the results of observations, and justified when corroborating observations are obtained. In fact, inductive reasoning is
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impossible lo extrapolate observations unless one already has an explanatory Iramework for them. But the refutation of inductivism, and also the real solution of the problem of induction, depends on recognizing that science is a process not of deriving predictions from observations, but of finding explanations. We seek explanations when we encounter a
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brief excursion into epistemology. << >> A Conversation About Justification (or 'David and the Crypto-inductivist') I think that I have solved a major philosophical problem: the problem of induction. Karl Popper As I explained in the Preface, this book is not primarily a defence of the fundamental theories of the four main strands; it
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satisfied those criteria today possibly imply anything about what will happen if we rely on the theory tomorrow? This is the modern form of the 'problem of induction'. Most philosophers are now content with Popper's contention that new theories are not inferred from anything, but are merely hypotheses. They also accept that
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they had succeeded, in the sense of constructing a scheme that could be followed successfully to create scientific knowledge, this would not have solved the problem of induction as it is nowadays understood. For in that case 'induction' would simply be another possible way of choosing theories, and the problem would remain of
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why those theories should be a reliable basis for action. In other words, philosophers who worry about this 'problem of induction' are not inductivists in the old-fashioned sense. They do not try to obtain or justify any theories inductively. They do not expect the sky
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an X-shaped gap in one's scheme of things and believing in X. Hence to fit in with the more sophisticated conception of the problem of induction, I wish to redefine the term 'inductivist' to mean someone who believes that the invalidity of inductive justification is a problem for the foundations of
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as he sees it in an imaginary dialogue between Popper and several other philosophers, entitled 'Why Both Popper and Watkins Fail to Solve {143} the Problem of Induction'.* The setting is the top of the Eiffel Tower. One of the participants - the 'Floater' - decides to descend by jumping over the side instead of
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what Popper has to say about induction, I have believed that he did indeed, as he claimed, solve the problem of induction. But few philosophers agree. Why? CRYPTO-INDUCTIVIST: Because Popper never addressed the problem of induction as we understand it. What he did was present a critique of inductivism. Inductivism said that there is an
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inductivism had been {144} known almost since it was invented, and certainly since David Hume's critique of it in the early eighteenth century. The problem of induction is not how to justify or refute the principle of induction, but rather, taking for granted that it is invalid, how to justify any conclusion
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the railing. CRYPTO-INDUCTIVIST: So in view of that, I repeat, the whole problem is to find what does justify the prediction. That is the problem of induction. DAVID: Well, that is the problem that Popper solved. CRYPTO-INDUCTIVIST: That's news to me, and I've studied Popper extensively. But anyway, what
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be rejected too, for it is just another way of stating your theory. CRYPTO-INDUCTIVIST: Could it be that there is a solution of the problem of induction lurking here after all? Let me see. How does this insight about language change things? My argument relied upon an apparent symmetry between your position
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difference between theories which make unexplained predictions and theories which don't, I must admit that this does look promising as a solution of the problem of induction. You seem to have discovered a way of justifying your future reliance on the theory of gravity, given only the past problem-situation (including past
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between theories being justified by observations (as inductivists think) and being justified by argument. But Popper made no such distinction. And in regard to the problem of induction, he actually said that although future predictions of a theory cannot be justified, we should act as though they were! DAVID: I don't think
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no principle of induction. There is no process of induction. No one ever uses them or anything like them. And there is no longer a problem of induction. Is that clear now? CRYPTO-INDUCTIVIST: Yes. Please excuse me for a few moments while I adjust my entire world-view. DAVID: To assist you
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by some as yet unknown means. In either case there is a missing justification. I no longer suspect that this is the problem of induction in disguise. Nevertheless, having exploded the problem of induction, have we not revealed another fundamental problem, also concerning missing justification, beneath? DAVID: What justifies the principles of rationality? Argument, as usual
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so blind? To think that I once nominated Popper for the Derrida Prize for Ridiculous {165} Pronouncements, while all the time he had solved the problem of induction! O mea culpa! God save us, for we have burned a saint! I feel so ashamed. I see no way out but to throw myself
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the succession of paradigms is one illustration of this. More seriously, very few philosophers agree with Popper's claim that there is no longer a 'problem of induction' because we do not in fact obtain or justify theories from observations, but proceed by explanatory conjectures and refutations instead. It is not that many
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defensive against obsolete theories. The debate between Popper and most of his critics was (as I said in Chapters 3 and 7) effectively about the problem of induction. Turing spent the last years of his life in effect defending the proposition that human brains do not operate by supernatural means. Everett left scientific
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Weinberg, Steven ������pointlessness of the universe 346 ������unimportance of explanation 3�4 Wheeler, John Archibald 328 'Why Both Popper and Watkins Fail to Solve the Problem of Induction' (Worrall) 143�4 Wickramasinghe, Chandra 333 Wooters, William 278 world�view 62, 75, 83, 97, 159, 161, 169, 318�19, 321, 331, 335 ������Darwin and
Rationality: From AI to Zombies
by Eliezer Yudkowsky · 11 Mar 2015 · 1,737pp · 491,616 words
says: “But I’ve seen other students double-check their answers and then they still turned out to be wrong. Or what if, by the problem of induction, 2 + 2 = 5 this time around? No matter what I do, I won’t be sure of myself.” It sounds very profound, and very modest
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the actions recommended by a “humble” line of thinking, and ask: “Does acting this way make you stronger, or weaker?” If you think about the problem of induction as applied to a bridge that needs to stay up, it may sound reasonable to conclude that nothing is certain no matter what precautions are
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“rubes,” then, when I reach in and feel another egg-shaped object, I may think, Oh, it’s a blegg, rather than considering all that problem-of-induction stuff. It is a common misconception that you can define a word any way you like. This would be true if the brain treated words
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old thing without justification? A similar critique is sometimes leveled against Bayesianism—that it requires assuming some prior—by people who apparently think that the problem of induction is a particular problem of Bayesianism, which you can avoid by using classical statistics. But first, let it be clearly admitted that the rules of
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Bayesian updating do not of themselves solve the problem of induction. Suppose you’re drawing red and white balls from an urn. You observe that, of the first 9 balls, 3 are red and 6 are
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reasonable-sounding argument that we should two-box on Newcomb’s problem, the reasonable-sounding argument that we can’t know anything due to the problem of induction, the reasonable-sounding argument that we will be better off on average if we always adopt the majority belief, and other such impediments to the
Predictive Analytics: The Power to Predict Who Will Click, Buy, Lie, or Die
by Eric Siegel · 19 Feb 2013 · 502pp · 107,657 words
how few people actually get that.” As Black Swan author Nassim Taleb put it in his suitably titled book, Fooled by Randomness, “Nowhere is the problem of induction more relevant than in the world of trading—and nowhere has it been as ignored!” Thus the occasional overzealous yet earnest public claim of economic
The Power Makers
by Maury Klein · 26 May 2008 · 782pp · 245,875 words
do all their testing on Sundays because construction work occupied the factory the rest of the week. Long, animated discussions about the potential and technical problems of induction motors, rotary converters, and alternating current itself punctuated their efforts.39 The pressure to produce excited and energized the engineers. Working on the frontier of
The Myth of Artificial Intelligence: Why Computers Can't Think the Way We Do
by Erik J. Larson · 5 Apr 2021
past). The eighteenth-century philosopher David Hume, who first pointed out the limits of induction, gave philosophers and scientists what is now known as the problem of induction. As Hume put it, relying on induction requires us to believe that “instances of which we have had no experience resemble those of which we
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the world has certain characteristics, and we can examine the world and tease out the knowledge that (we think) we have about it.4 The problem of induction may seem like an armchair worry that philosophers like to indulge, but in fact the limits of inductive inference raise constant problems for scientists in
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clear inferential rules. To model inference on science, then, we must expose errors in our thinking about scientific investigation and truth-seeking generally. Thus the problem of induction came under his scrutiny; he called it one of the core “problems of philosophy” (in his book of that title), and argued, like Sir Karl
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floor at 3:30 AM. Of course there are reliable generalizations—we see them everywhere, and it’s not delusional to do so—but the problem of induction, as Russell pointed out, is that we have no grounds for inferring knowledge based only on such generalizations. Science must rely on deeper and more
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, which is the entire point of the quest to achieve general intelligence. Computer scientists relying on inductive methods often dismiss Hume’s (or Russell’s) problem of induction as irrelevant. As the logic goes, of course there are no guarantees of correctness using induction, but we can get “close enough.” This response misses
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games, which have rules to box in statistical inferences. A probably approximately correct solution leaves unchanged the problem of induction in dynamic environments outside a game world or research laboratory. AI researchers are aware of the problem of induction (either explicitly or implicitly), but it rarely enters into critiques of machine learning (or deep learning) because
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. This is like looking for your keys under a lamppost because the light is better there. It’s true that human beings have “solved” the problem of induction well enough to use experience effectively in the real world (where else?). But humans solve the problem of inference not with inductive inference in some
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knowledge and inference in experience exclusively, which is precisely what machine learning approaches to AI do. We should not be surprised, then, that all the problems of induction bedevil machine learning and data-centric approaches to AI. Data are just observed facts, stored in computers for accessibility. And observed facts, no matter how
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thought to empower AI systems with previously unavailable “smarts” and insight. In a sense, this is true, but not in the sense necessary to escape problems of induction. We turn to big data next. THE END OF BIG DATA Big data is a notoriously amorphous idea that refers generally to the power of
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say that data alone, big data or not, and inductive methods like machine learning have inherent limitations that constitute roadblocks to progress in AI. The problem of induction, it turns out, really is a problem for modern AI. Their window into meaning is tied directly to data, which is a limiting constraint on
A History of Western Philosophy
by Aaron Finkel · 21 Mar 1945 · 1,402pp · 369,528 words
that can be tested by observation. Usually the deduction is mathematical, and in this respect Bacon underestimated the importance of mathematics in scientific investigation. The problem of induction by simple enumeration remains unsolved to this day. Bacon was quite right in rejecting simple enumeration where the details of scientific investigation are concerned, for
Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error
by Kathryn Schulz · 7 Jun 2010 · 486pp · 148,485 words
core beliefs and believe them only because we think such justification is, at the very least, in the offing.” David Hume. Hume lays out the problem of induction in his Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (Oxford University Press, 2006). “the poverty of the stimulus” (FN). Chomsky describes this problem in his Rules and Representations
Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach
by Stuart Russell and Peter Norvig · 14 Jul 2019 · 2,466pp · 668,761 words
Aristotle in 350 BCE in Physics book I, chapter VI: “For the more limited, if adequate, is always preferable.” David Hume (1711–1776) formulated the problem of induction, recognizing that generalizing from examples admits the possibility of errors, in a way that logical deduction does not. He saw that there was no way
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1 and 3 and h1 is next to a second helix.” 20.5.1An example Recall from Equation (20.5) that the general knowledge-based induction problem is to “solve” the entailment constraint for the unknown Hypothesis, given the Background knowledge and examples described by Descriptions and Classifications. To illustrate this, we
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, 763 constructive induction algorithms, 760 description, 758 family tree, 760 inverse entailment, 765 inverse resolution, 763, 764–766 Journal of Molecular Biology, 766 knowledge-based induction problem, 758 linear resolution, 765 LINUS system, 765 molecular biology experiments, 767 NEW-LITERALS, 762–763 positive and negative examples, 758, 759 PROGOL system, 765, 766
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, 763 constructive induction algorithms, 760 description, 758 family tree, 760 inverse entailment, 765 inverse resolution, 763, 764–766 Journal of Molecular Biology, 766 knowledge-based induction problem, 758 linear resolution, 765 LINUS system, 765 molecular biology experiments, 767 NEW-LITERALS, 762–763 positive and negative examples, 758, 759 PROGOL system, 765, 766
The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language
by Steven Pinker · 1 Jan 1994 · 661pp · 187,613 words
., & Xu, F. 1992. Overregularization in language acquisition. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 57. Markman, E. 1989. Categorization and naming in children: Problems of induction. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Marr, D. 1982. Vision. San Francisco: Freeman. Marslen-Wilson, W. 1975. Sentence comprehension as an interactive, parallel process. Science, 189, 226
Open Standards and the Digital Age: History, Ideology, and Networks (Cambridge Studies in the Emergence of Global Enterprise)
by Andrew L. Russell · 27 Apr 2014 · 675pp · 141,667 words
were building more – and more powerful – lines and transmission facilities, which, infuriatingly for telephone engineers, generated more interference. The first cooperative efforts to address the problem of inductive interference occurred in California, under the auspices of the California Railroad Commission. Between 1912 and 1917, the commission’s Joint Committee on Inductive Interference – consisting
The Science of Language
by Noam Chomsky · 24 Feb 2012
, look, it's animal instinct. He didn't know where to go from there. But I think that's correct. So his solution to the problem of induction, as distinct from Goodman's, is that it's simply animal instinct. It's our nature; and we can't go beyond that, other than
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in order to speak of and classify things in ways that we hope will be reliable. The projection problem is a version of the traditional “problem of induction.” Efforts to solve it are related to various efforts to undercut skepticism, or “answer the skeptic.” See Projectibility. SEM One of the core language computational
The Master Algorithm: How the Quest for the Ultimate Learning Machine Will Remake Our World
by Pedro Domingos · 21 Sep 2015 · 396pp · 117,149 words
operations we can perform without thinking about them. —Alfred North Whitehead Contents Prologue Chapter 1The Machine-Learning Revolution Chapter 2The Master Algorithm Chapter 3Hume’s Problem of Induction Chapter 4How Does Your Brain Learn? Chapter 5Evolution: Nature’s Learning Algorithm Chapter 6In the Church of the Reverend Bayes Chapter 7You Are What You
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are what counts. Are you ready? Our journey begins with a visit to the symbolists, the tribe with the oldest roots. CHAPTER THREE Hume’s Problem of Induction Are you a rationalist or an empiricist? Rationalists believe that the senses deceive and that logical reasoning is the only sure path to knowledge. Empiricists
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to her answers: they’re random, and you’re just spinning your wheels trying to find a pattern in them. Philosophers have debated Hume’s problem of induction ever since he posed it, but no one has come up with a satisfactory answer. Bertrand Russell liked to illustrate the problem with the story
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Times, 2011). More on the various tribes’ paths to the Master Algorithm in the corresponding sections below. Chapter Three Hume’s classic formulation of the problem of induction appears in Volume I of A Treatise of Human Nature (1739). David Wolpert derives his “no free lunch” theorem for induction in “The lack of
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with learner, 266–267 data gathering, 272 DeepMind and, 222 knowledge graph, 255 Master Algorithm and, 282 Naïve Bayes and, 152 PageRank and, 154, 305 problem of induction and, 61 relational learning and, 227–228 search results, 13 value of data, 274 value of learning algorithms, 10, 12 Google Brain network, 117 Google
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intuition, data and, 39 Humanities, machine learning and, 278 Human Rights Watch, 281 Hume, David, 58–59, 62, 63, 93, 178, 300–301 Hume’s problem of induction, 58–59, 145, 169, 197, 251 Humie Awards, 134 Hunt, Earl, 88 Hyperplanes, 98, 100, 195, 196 Hyperspace, 107–111, 187 Hypotheses Bayesians and, 144
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, 82–85, 91 Master Algorithm and, 240–241, 242–243 nature and, 141 “no free lunch” theorem, 62–65 overfitting, 70–75 probability and, 173 problem of induction, 59–62 sets of rules, 68–70 Taleb, Nassim, 38, 158 Tamagotchi, 285 Technology machine learning as, 236–237 sex and evolution of, 136–137
Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets
by Nassim Nicholas Taleb · 1 Jan 2001 · 111pp · 1 words
THE RARE-EVENT FALLACY The Mother of All Deceptions Why Don’t Statisticians Detect Rare Events? A Mischievous Child Replaces the Black Balls Seven THE PROBLEM OF INDUCTION FROM BACON TO HUME Cygnus Atratus Niederhoffer SIR KARL’S PROMOTING AGENT Location, Location Popper’s Answer Open Society Nobody Is Perfect Induction and Memory
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finance professors as they tend to firmly believe that they know something, and something useful at that). It is presented as flowing from Hume’s Problem of Induction (or Aristotle’s inference to the general) as opposed to the paradigm of the gambling literature. In this book probability is principally a branch of
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evolution are concepts that are misundderstood in the nonbiological world. Life is not continuous. How evolution will be fooled by randomness. A prolegomenon for the problem of induction. SIX: SKEWNESS AND ASYMMETRY We introduce the concept of skewness: Why the terms “bull” and “bear” have limited meaning outside of zoology. A vicious child
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wrecks the structure of randomness. An introduction to the problem of epistemic opacity. The penultimate step before the problem of induction. SEVEN: THE PROBLEM OF INDUCTION On the chromodynamics of swans. Taking Solon’s warning into some philosophical territory. How Victor Niederhoffer taught me empiricism; I added deduction. Why it
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more resistant to randomness. Solon also had the intuition of a problem that has obsessed science for the past three centuries. It is called the problem of induction. I call it in this book the black swan or the rare event. Solon even understood another linked problem, which I call the skewness issue
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of security. The point is dubbed in this book the black swan problem, which we cover in Chapter 7, as it is linked to the problem of induction, a problem that has kept a few thinkers awake at night. It is also related to a problem called denigration of history, as gamblers, investors
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evolution are concepts that are misunderstood in the nonbiological world. Life is not continuous. How evolution will be fooled by randomness. A prolegomenon for the problem of induction. CARLOS THE EMERGING-MARKETS WIZARD I used to meet Carlos at a variety of New York parties, where he would show up impeccably dressed, though
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meaning outside of zoology. A vicious child wrecks the structure of randomness. An introduction to the problem of epistemic opacity. The penultimate step before the problem of induction. THE MEDIAN IS NOT THE MESSAGE The essayist and scientist Steven Jay Gould (who, for a while, was my role model), was once diagnosed when
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entire concept seem like a costly (perhaps very costly) mistake. This leads us to a more fundamental question: The problem of induction, to which we will turn in the next chapter. Seven • THE PROBLEM OF INDUCTION On the chromodynamics of swans. Taking Solon’s warning into some philosophical territory. How Victor Niederhoffer taught me empiricism; I
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we discuss this problem viewed from the broader standpoint of the philosophy of scientific knowledge. There is a problem in inference well-known as the problem of induction. It is a problem that has been haunting science for a long time, but hard science has not been as harmed by it as the
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social sciences, particularly economics, even more the branch of financial economics. Why? Because the randomness content compounds its effects. Nowhere is the problem of induction more relevant than in the world of trading—and nowhere has it been as ignored! Cygnus Atratus In his Treatise on Human Nature, the Scots
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, it was how they knew it, that was the subject of my annoyance. Popper’s Answer Popper came up with a major answer to the problem of induction (to me he came up with the answer). No man has influenced the way scientists do science more than Sir Karl—in spite of the
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is the reduction in the degree of detected randomness. Pascal’s Wager I conclude with the exposition of my own method of dealing with the problem of induction. The philosopher Pascal proclaimed that the optimal strategy for humans is to believe in the existence of God. For if God exists, then the believer
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the pot). It would certainly modify the conclusion. It’s a Bull Market As to the second, more serious flaw, I have already discussed the problem of induction. The story focuses on an unusual episode in history; buying its thesis implies accepting that the current returns in asset values are permanent (the sort
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even know how many colors there are). But somehow people “measure” risks, particularly if they are paid for it. I have already discussed Hume’s problem of induction and the occurrence of black swans. Here I introduce the scientific perpetrators. Recall that I have waged a war against the charlatanism of some prominent
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a discussion of the LTCM events partook of a masquerade of science by adducing ad hoc explanations and putting the blame on a rare event (problem of induction: How did they know it was a rare event?). They spent their energy defending themselves rather than trying to make a buck with what they
The Invention of Science: A New History of the Scientific Revolution
by David Wootton · 7 Dec 2015 · 1,197pp · 304,245 words
draw conclusions from the facts we often go astray because we have misunderstood their significance. Hobbes even sketched out what would later become the classic problems of induction: Hume’s, that just because the sun has risen every morning until now, it does not follow that it will rise tomorrow; and Popper’s
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of the event; but may not conclude it for a Truth.53 A radical shift from the position of Hobbes (who clearly states Hume’s problem of induction and rejects Evidence-Indices as no basis for certainty), and even from that of Locke (who may be described as clearly defining the choice between
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not obvious even now that relying on Evidence-Indices was bound to be a winning strategy. The whole point of Hume’s formulation of the problem of induction is that we cannot explain why induction tends to work quite well, why nature seems extremely regular in its proceedings (or at least seems regular
Radical Uncertainty: Decision-Making for an Unknowable Future
by Mervyn King and John Kay · 5 Mar 2020 · 807pp · 154,435 words
rise. We should in vain, therefore, attempt to demonstrate its falsehood.’ 5 And it may have been in response to that famous formulation of the problem of induction by the irreligious Hume that the Reverend Bayes picked up his pen to describe conditional probabilities and to suggest that inferences could be made from
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to the age of eighty-eight. The absence of observed volatility should never be confused with the absence of risk. Hume’s formulation of the problem of induction assured us that we are not justified in believing that the sun will rise tomorrow on the basis of the information that it has always
The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window Into Human Nature
by Steven Pinker · 10 Sep 2007 · 698pp · 198,203 words
in phrases. The triumph of language acquisition is even more impressive when we consider that a talking child has solved a knotty instance of the problem of induction: observing a finite sample of events and framing a generalization that embraces the infinite set from which the events are drawn.7 Scientists engage in
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theories that fit the data are more likely to be true than complex ones. As children learn their mother tongue, they, too, are solving an induction problem. When listening to their parents and siblings, they can’t just file away every sentence and draw on that list in the future, or they
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to understand and express new thoughts, and do it in a way that is consistent with the speech patterns used by those around them. The induction problem arises because ambient speech offers countless opportunities for the child to leap on seductive yet false generalizations. For instance, as children learn how to ask
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plunge from a wide view of the human mind to the acquisition of locative constructions, I said that language acquisition is an example of the problem of induction—making valid generalizations about the future from limited data available in the present, whether they involve language acquisition by a child, learning by a computer
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of them, so that children can figure out what a word means from a few examples of its use. Word learning is as scandalous an induction problem as the acquisition of syntax or the practice of science, because there are an infinite number of generalizations, most of them wrong, that are logically
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Research in Child Development, 57. Marcus, R. B. 1961. Modalities and intensional languages. Synthèse, 13, 303—322. Markman, E. 1989. Categorization and naming in children: Problems of induction. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Marr, D. 1982. Vision. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman. Marshall, J., Chiat, S., Robson, J., & Print, T. 1996. Calling a salad
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as window into human nature see also language learning; semantics; syntax language acquisition, see language learning Language Instinct, The (Pinker) language learnability language learning as induction problem Linguistic Determinism and language of thought languages, see American Sign Language, Arabic language, Aymara language, Berber language, Chichewa language, Chinese language, Czech language, Danish language
Surfaces and Essences
by Douglas Hofstadter and Emmanuel Sander · 10 Sep 2012 · 1,079pp · 321,718 words
. Mandler, Jean M. (2004). The Foundations of Mind: Origins of Conceptual Thought. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Markman, Ellen M. (1991). Categorization and Naming in Children: Problems of Induction. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press (Bradford Books). McCloskey, Michael E. and Sam Glucksberg (1978). “Natural categories: Well defined or fuzzy sets?” Memory and Cognition, 6, pp
The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values
by Sam Harris · 5 Oct 2010 · 412pp · 115,266 words
). Anticipatory haemodynamic signals in sensory cortex not predicted by local neuronal activity. Nature, 457 (7228), 475–479. Sloman, S. A., & Lagnado, D. A. (2005). The problem of Induction. In K. J. Holyoak & R. G. Morrison (Eds.), The Cambridge handbook of thinking and reasoning (pp. 95–116). New York: Cambridge University Press. Slovic, P
Safe Haven: Investing for Financial Storms
by Mark Spitznagel · 9 Aug 2021 · 231pp · 64,734 words
at any time, and our risk mitigation could thus raise our CAGR (relative to our position had we not used that mitigation). This is the problem of induction, where the arrival of just one black swan falsifies any claim that all swans are white. But when I say that cost‐effective risk mitigation
The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood
by James Gleick · 1 Mar 2011 · 855pp · 178,507 words
in language. All this was bouncing around in Solomonoff’s mind; he was not sure where it led, but he found himself focusing on the problem of induction. How do people create theories to account for their experience of the world? They have to make generalizations, find patterns in data that are always
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
by Thomas S. Kuhn and Ian Hacking · 1 Jan 1962 · 314pp · 91,652 words
-toward-what-we-wish-to-know, a number of vexing problems may vanish in the process. Somewhere in this maze, for example, must lie the problem of induction. I cannot yet specify in any detail the consequences of this alternate view of scientific advance. But it helps to recognize that the conceptual transposition
Everything Is Predictable: How Bayesian Statistics Explain Our World
by Tom Chivers · 6 May 2024 · 283pp · 102,484 words
Karl Popper in his rejection of Bayesianism, so perhaps I ought to say what Popper argued. Back in the eighteenth century, David Hume raised the problem of induction. All of our scientific reasoning, he said, is based on an assumption that the future will be like the past. If I drop a hammer
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, observing the past and drawing conclusions about the likely future—was still reliable. Understandably, philosophers weren’t very happy leaving it at that, and the problem of induction has been a niggling thorn in their side for the last 250 years. It’s a particular pain for philosophers of science—and philosophically inclined
Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters
by Steven Pinker · 14 Oct 2021 · 533pp · 125,495 words
world: The psychology of judgment and decision making (2nd ed.). Los Angeles: Sage. Henderson, L. 2020. The problem of induction. In E. N. Zalta, ed., The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2020/entries/induction-problem/. Henrich, J., Heine, S. J., & Norenzayan, A. 2010. The weirdest people in the world? Behavioral and
Intertwingled: Information Changes Everything
by Peter Morville · 14 May 2014 · 165pp · 50,798 words
’t my goal. Surprises in life are more common than most of us care to admit. One reason we make mistakes is known as the problem of induction. We spend our lives trying to see the future using our knowledge of the past. We draw general conclusions by observing specific events. Induction is
Understanding Sponsored Search: Core Elements of Keyword Advertising
by Jim Jansen · 25 Jul 2011 · 298pp · 43,745 words
effort with its extreme capacity for data collection. The problem with predicting the future using data from the past is described [2]. by Hume’s Problem of Induction [2 2]. Hume’s Problem of Induction questions whether one can predict that any event in the future will occur just because it occurred in the past. The
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induction problem entered pop culture via the book, The Black Swan, with [3]. the title being a classic example of induction from prior data [3 3]. For
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hotel problem, 163 Hotmail, 134 Hotwired, 10 human information behavior, 34, 36–37, 45, 55, 62, 211 human information processing, 35–36, 211 Hume’s Problem of Induction, 218 Hunt, S. D., 116 Hunter, Lee, 19 IdeaLab, 11 imperfect information, 179, 194 impression, 12, 14, 24, 75–77, 133, 209 impulse buying, 93
Think Twice: Harnessing the Power of Counterintuition
by Michael J. Mauboussin · 6 Nov 2012 · 256pp · 60,620 words
we look for patterns where none exist.”13 Extrapolation puts a finer point on a number of other mistakes as well. We can restate the problem of induction as inappropriately projecting into the future, based on a limited number of observations. Failure to reflect reversion to the mean is the result of extrapolating
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the population very brittle, in that a small reduction in the demand for shares could have a strong destabilizing impact on the market.”11 The Problem of Induction, Reductive Bias, and Bad Predictions The presence of phase transitions invites a few common decision-making mistakes. The first is the
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problem of induction, or how you should logically go from specific observations to general conclusions. Although philosophers, from Sextus Empiricus to David Hume, have for centuries warned against
Fluke: Chance, Chaos, and Why Everything We Do Matters
by Brian Klaas · 23 Jan 2024 · 250pp · 96,870 words
from uncertainty into certainty. In the eighteenth century, however, the Scottish philosopher David Hume warned that probability was far from certainty, by articulating his famous “problem of induction.” Hume’s warning was astute: most of our understanding of cause and effect is based solely on experience, based on what happened in the past
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, 30 atman (individual soul) in Hinduism and, 33 biology and, 35–36 interconnection of lives and, 27 loss of connection to natural world and, 34 induction, problem of, 108 Industrial Revolution, 156 infinite regress, 46, 225 inheritance, genetic, 17 intelligence, distribution of, 241 internet, 102–3, 122, 190 Iwfgara (concept of interconnectedness
The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding From You
by Eli Pariser · 11 May 2011 · 274pp · 75,846 words
to predict the future. Karl Popper, one of the preeminent philosophers of science, made it his life’s mission to try to sort out the problem of induction, as it came to be known. While the optimistic thinkers of the late 1800s looked at the history of science and saw a journey toward
The Rationalist's Guide to the Galaxy: Superintelligent AI and the Geeks Who Are Trying to Save Humanity's Future
by Tom Chivers · 12 Jun 2019 · 289pp · 92,714 words
ever happened’.) Bayes’ theorem is extremely useful from a philosophical point of view. I studied philosophy at university, and there were endless arguments about the ‘problem of induction’. The idea was that you could see a million white swans, but you would never be able to prove the statement ‘all swans are white
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get on a boat to Van Diemen’s Land, and you see a black swan. Your confidence immediately plummets to 0.01 per cent. The problem of induction isn’t a problem any more, as long as you’re willing to think in terms of likelihoods and probabilities, rather than certainties. You’re
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fact, evidence of absence, even if not strong evidence. (I should say: this isn’t something the Rationalists came up with. Bayesian solutions to the problem of induction and the paradox of the ravens are decades old. And people still get very angry about them and argue that they’re wrong. They’re
Science Fictions: How Fraud, Bias, Negligence, and Hype Undermine the Search for Truth
by Stuart Ritchie · 20 Jul 2020
. 226–35; https://doi.org/10.1093/ije/dyx206 25. If you really want to freak yourself out, read about the philosopher David Hume’s ‘Problem of Induction’, which essentially states that correlation isn’t even correlation – there’s no rational basis for arguing that things that have happened before will happen again
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crack it, others think it’s flatly unsolvable. An excellent discussion is provided in Leah Henderson, ‘The Problem of Induction’, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta, Winter 2019; https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2019/entries/induction-problem 26. Rachel C. Adams et al., ‘Claims of Causality in Health News: A Randomised Trial’, BMC
How to Talk to a Science Denier: Conversations With Flat Earthers, Climate Deniers, and Others Who Defy Reason
by Lee McIntyre · 14 Sep 2021 · 407pp · 108,030 words
pp. 41–46 of The Scientific Attitude, where I give an account of the technical reasons why science cannot rely on certainty, given Hume’s problem of induction. I also discuss the important doctrine of fallibilism. 5. Daniel Kahneman, Thinking Fast and Slow (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2011). 6. Naveena Sadasivam, “New
Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder
by Nassim Nicholas Taleb · 27 Nov 2012 · 651pp · 180,162 words
problem in the probability domain. As to further reading, I am avoiding the duplication of those mentioned in earlier books, particularly those concerning the philosophical problem of induction, Black Swan problems, and the psychology of uncertainty. I managed to bury some mathematical material in the text without Alexis K., the math-phobic London
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anyone in the state of Nevada. ‘It cost us one million dollars not to do something about Murray,’ O’Bryan said.” Gladwell (2009). Falsification and problems of induction: See references in The Black Swan. Smoking and overall medical effect: Burch (2009). Fractality: Mandelbrot (1983). Edgerton’s shock of the old: Edgerton (2007). Less
Chaos Kings: How Wall Street Traders Make Billions in the New Age of Crisis
by Scott Patterson · 5 Jun 2023 · 289pp · 95,046 words
Hume asserted that no one can know with absolute certainty that the sun will rise tomorrow, a claim that became known in philosophy as the Problem of Induction. This way of looking at things reduces our ability to predict future events from 100 percent to some lower statistical measure. For example, we can
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cooked up in a mad scientist’s lab will swallow up the solar system in a nanosecond. Inspired by debates over issues such as the Problem of Induction and the Turkey Problem, Empirica was very much like a laboratory experiment operating in real time as Taleb and Spitznagel searched for the optimal strategy
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-bound, costumed figure battling the evils of bitcoin and the Federal Reserve and tossing off advice such as “We must always be vigilant against the problem of induction.” Misconceptions about what exactly constitutes a Black Swan endlessly tortured Taleb. People asked: “Was September 11 a Black Swan?” Yes, for the people in the
Mind in Motion: How Action Shapes Thought
by Barbara Tversky · 20 May 2019 · 426pp · 117,027 words
Basic level Brown, R. (1958). How shall a thing be called? Psychological Review, 65(1), 14. Markman, E. M. (1989). Categorization and naming in children: Problems of induction. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Rosch, E. (1978). Principles of categorization. In E. Rosch & B. Lloyd (Eds.), Cognition and categorization (pp. 27–48). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum
The Success Equation: Untangling Skill and Luck in Business, Sports, and Investing
by Michael J. Mauboussin · 14 Jul 2012 · 299pp · 92,782 words
. In one direction, we observe a small sample and believe, falsely, that we know what all of the possibilities look like. This is the classic problem of induction, drawing general conclusions from specific observations. We saw, for instance, that small schools produced students with the highest test scores. But that didn't mean
The Fair Trade Scandal: Marketing Poverty to Benefit the Rich
by Ndongo Sylla · 21 Jan 2014 · 193pp · 63,618 words
logical point of view, even if it can prove efficient from a media point of view. In epistemology, this is notoriously referred to as the ‘problem of induction’. The fact that X number of observations show this or that does not prove anything that would logically give the status of ‘law’ or irrefutable
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, 38 Price volatility, 17–18, 66, 86, 109 Primary product dependency, 10, 16, 90, 121, 132–8, 140–1, 147 Primary product financialisation, 17–8 Problem of induction, 110 Producer organisations, 3, 80, 98, 118–19, 157(n3), 159 (n16); certification, 45, 48, 49, 51, 91, 109, 111; 159(n20), 160(n4); selection
The End of Growth: Adapting to Our New Economic Reality
by Richard Heinberg · 1 Jun 2011 · 372pp · 107,587 words
of Financial Crises,” (presented at the meeting of the American Economic Association, San Francisco, CA, January 3, 2009). 10. In philosophy this is called the problem of induction. One cannot infer that a series of events will happen in the future just as they have in past. For example, if all the swans
Beautiful Testing: Leading Professionals Reveal How They Improve Software (Theory in Practice)
by Adam Goucher and Tim Riley · 13 Oct 2009 · 351pp · 123,876 words
? What tests always seem to pass, we expect to always pass, and provide us only confirmatory value? These are philosophical questions about truth, the classic problem of induction. As the saying goes, if we are trying to determine the truth of the statement “all swans are white,” a million white swans give us
The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World
by Niall Ferguson · 13 Nov 2007 · 471pp · 124,585 words
, which causes us to attach higher probabilities to events after they have happened (ex post) than we did before they happened (ex ante); 3. The problem of induction, which leads us to formulate general rules on the basis of insufficient information; 4. The fallacy of conjunction (or disjunction), which means we tend to
The Personal MBA: A World-Class Business Education in a Single Volume
by Josh Kaufman · 2 Feb 2011 · 624pp · 127,987 words
or didn’t exist—everyone knew that all swans were white. The problem with the term is what eighteenth-century philosopher David Hume called the “problem of induction”: until you see every swan that exists, you can never assume the statement “all swans are white” is true. All it takes is one black
Life Is Simple: How Occam's Razor Set Science Free and Shapes the Universe
by Johnjoe McFadden · 27 Sep 2021
became interested in probability after reading A Treatise of Human Nature by the Scottish philosopher David Hume. Hume posed what has become known as the ‘induction problem’ as a criticism of the dominant scientific method since the Enlightenment. As mentioned in Chapter 10, induction had been pioneered by Francis Bacon as a
Data Science for Business: What You Need to Know About Data Mining and Data-Analytic Thinking
by Foster Provost and Tom Fawcett · 30 Jun 2013 · 660pp · 141,595 words
–Supervised Segmentation with Tree-Structured Models overfitting and, Overfitting in Tree Induction–Overfitting in Tree Induction, Avoiding Overfitting with Tree Induction–Avoiding Overfitting with Tree Induction problems with, Avoiding Overfitting with Tree Induction Tree of Life (Sugden et al; Pennisi), Hierarchical Clustering tree-structured models classification, Supervised Segmentation with Tree-Structured Models
Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming
by Stephen Laberge, Phd and Howard Rheingold · 8 Feb 2015
effortless method. For people who are highly susceptible to hypnosis, on the other hand, suggestion techniques may offer an effective solution to the lucid dream induction problem, as we shall see when we discuss posthypnotic suggestion. Autosuggestion Technique Relax completely While lying in bed, gently close your eyes and relax your head