Inference Quotes

“Στο βάθος του μυαλού μου όμως ξέρω πως εδώ στο νησί μας, όπως και αλλού, οι γάτες ξεχνάνε, οι άνθρωποι ξεχνάνε και η τρέλα δε θέλει πολύ να φουντώσει πάλι, φτου ξανά απ'την αρχή...”
― Eugene Trivizas, The Last Black Cat

“It's frightening to think that you might not know something, but more frightening to think that, by and large, the world is run by people who have faith that they know exactly what is going on.”
― Amos Tversky

“And when someone suggests you believe in a proposition, you must first examine it to see whether it is acceptable, because our reason was created by God, and whatever pleases our reason can but please divine reason, of which, for that matter, we know only what we infer from the processes of our own reason by analogy and often by negation.”
― Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose

“Holmes laughed. "Watson insists that I am the dramatist in real life," said he. "Some touch of the artist wells up within me, and calls insistently for a well-staged performance. Surely our profession, Mr. Mac, would be a drab and sordid one if we did not sometimes set the scene so as to glorify our results. The blunt accusation, the brutal tap upon the shoulder - what can one make of such a denouement? But the quick inference, the subtle trap, the clever forecast of coming events, the triumphant vindication of bold theories - are these not the pride and the justification of our life's work? At the present moment you thrill with the glamour of the situation and the anticipation of the hunt. Where would be that thrill if I had been as definite as a timetable?”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Complete Sherlock Holmes: Volume II

“To engage the written word means to follow a line of thought, which requires considerable powers of classifying, inference-making and reasoning. It means to uncover lies, confusions, and overgeneralizations, to detect abuses of logic and common sense. It also means to weigh ideas, to compare and contrast assertions, to connect one generalization to another. To accomplish this, one must achieve a certain distance from the words themselves, which is, in fact, encouraged by the isolated and impersonal text. That is why a good reader does not cheer an apt sentence or pause to applaud even an inspired paragraph. Analytic thought is too busy for that, and too detached.”
― Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business

“Science proceeds by inference, rather than by the deduction of mathematical proof. A series of observations is accumulated, forcing the deeper question: What must be true if we are to explain what is observed? What "big picture" of reality offers the best fit to what is actually observed in our experience? American scientist and philosopher Charles S. Peirce used the term "abduction" to refer to the way in which scientists generate theories that might offer the best explanation of things. The method is now more often referred to as "inference to the best explanation." It is now widely agreed to be the philosophy of investigation of the world characteristic of the natural sciences.”
― Alister E. McGrath

“The aim of scientific thought, then, is to apply past experience to new circumstances; the instrument is an observed uniformity in the course of events. By the use of this instrument it gives us information transcending our experience, it enables us to infer things that we have not seen from things that we have seen; and the evidence for the truth of that information depends on our supposing that the uniformity holds good beyond our experience.”
― William Kingdon Clifford, Lectures and Essays by the Late William Kingdon Clifford, F.R.S.

“I find this most useful. It justifies the expert time spent upon it. We now have a number of so-called facts each preceded by the word 'probably'. It shows commendable caution on the part of those who don't want to accept responsibility for their own statements."
"An intelligent guess is better than no guess at all, Your Excellency," suggested Shelton, who by now had worked off his ire on the unfortunate Trooper Casartelli.
"It isn't even an intelligent guess," denied the Ambassador. "It is based solely on what can be seen. No account has been taken of what cannot be seen."
"I don't know how it is possible to do that," said Shelton, failing to understand what the other was getting at.
"I neither ask nor expect the impossible," the Ambassador gave back. "My point is that data based exclusively on the visible may be made completely worthless by the invisible." He tapped the report with an authoritative forefinger. "They estimate sixteen thousand strongholds -- above ground. How many are below ground?"
"Subterranean ones?" exclaimed Shelton, startled.
"Of course. There may be fifty thousand of those for all we know."
"We didn't see any."
"He says we didn't see any," the Ambassador said to Grayder.”
― Eric Frank Russell, The Great Explosion

“To teach students any psychology they did not know before, you must surprise them. But which surprise will do? Nisbett and Borgida found that when they presented their students with a surprising statistical fact, the students managed to learn nothing at all. But when the students were surprised by individual cases…they immediately made the generalization…
Nisbett and Borgida summarize the results in a memorable sentence: ‘Subjects’ unwillingness to deduce the particular from the general was matched only by their willingness to infer the general from the particular.”
― Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow

“There’s a disadvantage in a stick pointing straight,” answered the other. “What is it? Why, the other end of the stick always points the opposite way. It depends whether you get hold of the stick by the right end.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Wisdom of Father Brown

“They got lost in translation. In the misinformation of their generation.”
― Sofia Gomez Puente

“Lakoff is right to insist that conceptual metaphors are not just literary garnishes but aides to reason – they are ‘metaphors we live by.’ And metaphors can power sophisticated inferences, not just obvious ones…”
― Steven Pinker, The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature

“The road itself tells us far more than signs do.”
― Tom Vanderbilt, Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do and What It Says About Us

“The task of general semiotics is that of tracing a single formal structure which underlies all these phenomena, this structure being that of the inference which generates interpretation.
The task of specific semiotics, on the other hand, will be that of establishing—according to the sign system in question—the rules of greater or lesser semiotic necessity for inferences (institutionalization rules).”
― Umberto Eco, Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language