The Problems of Inductive Reasoning

All science and knowledge of the world to this point has come from trust in inductive reasoning. If an apple falls in a forest does it make a sound? Well of course it does, it would have to violate many principles of physics not to, but where did these principles of physics come from? What is gravity? We know that it must be, but how and why does it work? Well we have documented gravity, does innumerable tests to verify that it indeed exists and how it relates to mass, but we really do not know what it is. It acts exactly like acceleration in every possible instance (which provides for interesting effects, but that is another rant), but it is tied to mass in some way.

Anyways it would not be so unusual (from a purely theoretical point of view) for gravity to reverse, to push instead of pull, and there would be no explanation for it. But from a human standpoint that would be unusual to say the least. Everything we have done, ever, has been with gravity acting a certain way, it would go against all expectations. Yet can we say that this instance will never happen? is it possible for it to happen? sure, it is possible, inexplicable but possible, so how can we make universal laws like gravity or conservation of matter (which is incorrect) from given input?

Our whole idea of how physics and the universe works has been smashed and rearranged several times over so how can we say with confidence that this is how the world works when we have thought that many times before and been wrong? Einstein destroyed Newtonian physics by introducing the idea that energy was proportional to mass, that energy had weight.

The traditional answer is that we perform many many accurate tests and make a rule of it if it passed every test, pretend that there is no way this rule could be broken, and if it was broken, then that just becomes part of the rule, an exception, or a redefinition of the rule. But the truth is that we do not "know" and we cannot "know" but we can estimate with certain amount of certainty.

Everything lies in probabilities, they can explain both why something happened and why it did not in a similar case. They allow for all circumstances, thus effectively telling nothing about what will happen in a given case, just because something is likely to happen does not mean it will.

What I am trying to say is that we can know nothing of what happens in the future, no matter how likely something is, it is no guarantee.

That is why I expect to find my bike has been stolen every time I look for it, why I expect to never see my friends and loved ones again when they leave for a while (or when I leave for a while). I dont expect for others to care about me or what I think. I am happy when I am wrong, but I still have this sinking feeling whenever I look for my bike, or I am about to see my family. Like it is too good to be true.

Sharp Puzzles poem and Uncertainty rant

Sharp Puzzles

Dice have razor edges,
every roulette game is russian.
The world is full of butterflies
and their fatal affects;
the sigh, the batting of the eye,
But the reaper whirlwind strips them of facade.
Yet we still sow,
mending the leftovers,
creating frankenstein futures
from fractured glass pasts,
only to realize we cannot find
the heart of the situation,
cannot find the purpose to shards,
but that is all we have left.

I want to be able to sing this to a woman some day...


Uncertainty and unpredictability are the most dangerous things in this world, yet they are inevitable as long as we are reliant on our senses and on outside information. The more unpredictable something is, the more dangerous. Things that seem harmless, like food, water, air can become deadly once unknown agents are introduced. The more variables that can go wrong, the more variables that will go wrong.

That is one thing that fascinates me about engineering, we say a car is a lemon if it needs a major repair 2 or 3 years after being "brand new" yet think about a car. How many parts does a car have that are absolutely necessary to functioning properly? hundreds? thousands? Most cars runs on EXPLOSIONS for gods sake! Controlled, but still one of the most seemingly unpredictable expressions of energy one can think of. The energy from those explosions are transferred to the wheels through gears and shafts and whatnot, each has to withstand various forces in various directions at various temperatures and fit to extremely tight tolerances. I find it amazing that a car can go hundreds of miles without wearing itself out, or spontaneously combusting, much more thousands, hundreds of thousands, and even 1 million miles http://autos.aol.com/article/million-mile-car-donated-to-museum/ (with luck and proper care)
so you can usually be certain that your car will work when you need it

Computers have billions of gates and parts that control it and work together to do extremely complicated tasks through logic and physics. It can calculate and store information using electrical charges for heavens sake. It can turn mere numbers into words and colors and movement and shading and physics. This is how I feel when I think about it too much: http://xkcd.com/676/ and the most amazing part is that they work, almost always, the number of defective computers is very low despite that they rely on both hardware and software to allow them to run. Now we even have software that learns, how amazing is that? Most of us are certain that our computer will turn on and work no matter what (that is if you have a mac lol).

Though my life is governed by the laws of physics (and chemistry, a subset of physics) it is not predictable at all. All is uncertainty, and frankly I dislike uncertainty, I have a tendency to paralyze myself until I am certain, I delay making decisions until I have sufficient information. But I do not have the time nor the information to see what is next, and I do not know when it will come. So what the hell do I do now?