
We Don't Really Understand Randomness - adolos
https://adolos.substack.com/p/we-dont-really-understand-randomness
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wahern
> How do we break out of this feeling of certainty and discover the truth?
> When looking for cause, try to disprove rather than prove the correlation.
> Ask what could go against the pattern of the event you seek — where you have
> randomness.

The more general approach is called Abduction:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abductive_reasoning](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abductive_reasoning)

Abduction is the process used in a legal trial--the crime or claim is a
consequence, the prosecution proffers the hypothesis that the defendant is the
causative agent and presents their evidence, while the defense attempts to
disprove the hypothesis while also proffering their own alternative
hypotheses. The entire trial and its procedural rules play out as an abductive
process. (The book "Analysis of Evidence" describes this more formally,
including exploring the relationships to Bayesian reasoning and other systems
of logic.)

A doctor uses abduction during a diagnosis--take all the symptoms and patient
context (prior illness, family history, etc), generate a set of potential
hypotheses about the cause, and compare-and-contrast them to see which is the
more likely. This is very often a more iterative, interactive process as you
can intervene (ask questions, run tests, etc) to bolster or filter various
hypotheses.

In science an informal abductive process is how you generate a hypothesis for
rigorous experimentation. Abduction is how you pinpoint a potential cause from
a consequence. The scientific method then starts from a cause (the
hypothesized starting condition) and attempts to empirically reproduce the
consequence, although formally you're attempting to disprove the consequence.

Abduction is a process of _generating_ , _comparing_ , and _winnowing_
hypotheses, not making a single guess and looking for proof. And at the end,
your chosen hypothesis, if you have one, is always contingent and
probabilistic.

Abduction is often conflated with induction, but it's not really the same
thing. For one, it's better characterized as an indefinitely iterative process
rather than a discrete mechanism. (You can't string together a set of
discretely abduced conclusions to infer something new; the new inference
should begin anew by holistically assessing as many of the previous inputs as
possible, as the broader context might reveal something new.) Recognizing the
distinction permits far more rigorous and consistently analytical thinking,
both professionally and in day-to-day life.

------
melling
“For example, Sam L. Savage was convinced he could use statistics to
accurately predict fruit prices, which was undoubtedly unwise. He hired a
commodities trading company, but lost $300 million in a matter of weeks.”

I’m not familiar with that story. Is it the same person who wrote this book?

[https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0096CT4VY/ref=dp-kindle-
redirect?...](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0096CT4VY/ref=dp-kindle-
redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1)

