Anything which involves cold, calculating, reptilian reasoning, eventually falls apart when it has to meet reality. You could even look at statistics this way, or academic disciplines which are built off this data like it is some kind of hard evidence for prediction when in reality there can never be enough data to confirm it. After all, if we can’t say for a fact whether it’s a justified true belief for a t-shirt to give you a better day, because there will never be enough data to confirm this and there are always other factors at play, what’s really the harm in biting the bullet and accepting the existence of irrational beliefs that feel good and provide a sense of comfort and understanding?Įssentially, you could look at religion in this way. With that being the case, the position for superstitious practises and rituals makes a lot more sense. When it comes to adults though there comes a point where you’ve just got to ignore the fact that you don’t and can’t ever have 100 per cent knowledge of situations and you must do something. It’s an okay way to come to an understanding of the world and it’s good for kids to question the universe they find themselves in. It seems like it’s just a position which is almost impossible to come up against as any way or arguing against it has numerous counter-examples plus the person who holds this position can just repeat it ad infinitum like a child constantly asking “Why?” until the exasperated parent has to say “Just, because”. What’s the answer to the problem of induction? I’ve not found any which are particularly satisfactory. There will never be enough data to correctly state that the sun will rise tomorrow as something could happen a million times but that doesn’t mean it will happen a million plus one. Therefore the statement, “the sun will rise tomorrow”, is not correct as we can’t prove that from the slim data that we have available. Mostly because if knowledge is a justified true belief, there’s an element of predicting the sun will rise tomorrow that fails as we don’t know it is true until it happens. It’s an okay way to come to truth, but the problem of induction – the product of arch-rationalist David Hume – would have it that this is not a way to come to knowledge, where knowledge equals a justified true belief. Ergo, it’s likely that the sky will rise tomorrow. The problem of induction, that’s the idea that you can’t figure out what will happen due to what has happened before. (I’m veering far from my speciality here, good philosophers as well as bad philosophers should feel free to correct me on this). That probably seems like a backwards way to come to knowledge but if you take the sceptical approach to the creation of knowledge, it might actually be more stable. I understand it on an intellectual level.īut try as I might I just can’t feel it and therefore it doesn’t seem real. ![]() Correlations do not reveal the actual reasons for results. Sometimes these nerds even have handy graphs showing how the decrease in pirates has led to an increase in greenhouse gases and clearly to stop global warming we need more pirates on the high seas. The issue there is that, as many a nerd has told me, in the nerdiest voice possible – like so nerdy it’s hard to believe – “correlation does not mean causation”. By taking note of when you’re wearing whatever t-shirts you can eventually come to conclusions about whether there is a statistically meaningful correlation. ![]() There’s actually an element to that which can be tested. I’ve got a few of these, mostly t-shirts that when I wear them confer me with magical powers of making more money. ![]() Like the idea that we can have “lucky” objects. We have no earthly way of proving that superstitions are in any way correct. I know, it’s generally speaking an irrational belief. But here’s where it gets funny, as a child I was a bit of a radical sceptic and now I’m probably one of the most superstitious people I know. We form patterns of behaviour throughout our childhood years and into our twenties before generally finding a groove about the time thirty hits. That much is obvious with pretty much everyone in the world except people who are much older and who’ve been part of a settled routine for a long time. If you talked to me 20 years ago, you would have found a very different person.
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