= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Vladimir_M comments on Preface to a Proposal for a New Mode of Inquiry - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (83)
That's not an example of a non-trivial induction, since you're talking about a set with only one element. A truly inductive statement says something about a larger set of things where we don't have the relevant empirical data about each single one of them. And once you start formalizing a procedure for non-trivial induction, the boundary between induction and deduction becomes very blurry indeed.
Maybe an example will clarify the issue. Compare general relativity to a world atlas. Both are computational tools that enable predictions, so both are, by my definition, scientific theories. Now GR is very complex deductively (it relies on complex mathematics), but very simple parametrically (it uses only a couple of constants). The world atlas is the opposite - simple deductively but complex parametrically (requires a lot of bits to specify).