Posted: Jan 10, 2020 4:11 pm
Spearthrower wrote:GrahamH wrote:Hermit wrote:Becoming aware of correlations is what helps survival. It even applies to pigeons. Unfortunately, it does not always work that way, as the inductivist Turkey discovered when its head was about to be separated from its neck.
Are you really unable to grasp the difference between being able to design mechanisms by applying laws of physics and superstition about the reliability of a turkey farmer?
I wouldn't read too much into it: Hermit's clearly just read The Black Swan and got just a little bit too carried away with it.Taleb uses it to illustrate the philosophical problem of induction and how past performance is no indicator of future performance.
Indeed, but clearly past performance can be a very reliable indicator of future performance for certain types of system. It's not a metaphysical guarantee, we can imagine fantastical hypotheticals where the laws of physics change arbitrarily, but there is no sign of a turkey farmer, is there? If induction were used with rigour a smart turkey could discover what to expect near Xmas and Easter.