#114 Russell’s Turkey

#114 Russell’s Turkey

For anyone who doesn’t know, today’s comic is borrowed from an awesome little example by Bertrand Russell to illustrate the weakness of inductive reasoning.

And just in case you’re looking for some more holiday fun, here’s an excellent story by Ben Burgis that just got published over at Diet Soap. Enjoy!


Discussion (12)¬

  1. Liquid_Elf says:

    A bertie russel joke Wow you just made my day!:P

  2. anon says:

    the k-day story was pretty interesting. does ben have more stuff anywhere?

  3. Ben says:

    Yep. A bunch of it is linked to here–http://tinaconnolly.com/clarion_west/

  4. I thought this inductive problem was Popper’s.

  5. chaospet says:

    Do you mean this particular example? I’m pretty sure it’s Russell. If you mean the problem of induction itself, it’s much older than either of them, it goes back at least to David Hume.

  6. Liquid_Elf says:

    ahhh hume is there something you didn’t critique?

  7. chaospet says:

    Hume was the man

  8. Troconeitor says:

    It’s curious to see a brilliant mind like Russell’s came out with such a stupid example to refute inductivism. In the context of Hume argument, Inductivism is meant to be applied EXCLUSIVELY to the natural world, that is, the part of reallity NOT RELATED TO ANY KIND OF WILL!!! Living beings, be it humans or animals, as well as their relatioships, are subjected to PASSIONS, not LAWS!!!

  9. Your definition of natural world is “wrong”, i.e. not what is normally meant.

  10. […] ett exempel med kalkoner, att induktion har sina brister som metod för att förutsäga framtiden. Chaospet illustrerar […]

  11. […] when close to 1, which is precisely the domain where science is most interested.  The story of Russell’s Turkey provides a vivid example of the ineffectiveness of frequency probability calculations, as even […]

  12. Simon says:

    I recognize that turkey to the left from the debate on climate change. It goes something like “oh, they said there would be catastrophes with the ozone layer and the Y2K problem and whatnot, but nothing happened, so nothing will happen this time either!”. Even if you accept the premises (which of course are silly as well; the ozone layer problem was solved because of CFC regulations), the conclusion is an inductive fallacy. The difference is that the turkey to the right in this comic doesn’t have much of an argument…

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