Evidence

Have you ever heard about the Salem Witch Trials? Well if you haven’t, what rock have you been under? The Salem Witch Trials led to more than 150 men and women being imprisoned. The evidence used against these men and women were based on “evil spirits”, which seems absurd today. This is a perfect example of how we use evidence to support our beliefs whether the evidence is good or bad.

In the passage, Evidence, the author emphasizes our use of inductive reasoning. The author states that inductive reasoning is a strategy of guessing based on past experience. She then compares humans to computers saying that computers lack this said strategy. She explains that computers do not have logic, so they are not able to rule out millions of answers to a multiple choice problem, since all the answers could be theoretically possible or logically valid. However, human beings can easily answer the questions because we can relate it back to our experiences and care about what is probable. To sum it up, humans can make sounder and more decisive evaluations because of our use of past experiences in inductive reasoning.

Contrarily, the author discusses how inductive reasoning can be unreliable. The main idea or thing we accumulate through inductive reasoning is usually probabilistically true, meaning they could be false. For example, the author uses the case of stereotypes of Muslim people. She writes,” This Muslim is a terrorist; All Muslims are terrorists”. This is a perfect example that highlights the “jumping to conclusions” when inductive reasoning is being used. Basically, inductive reasoning can be flawed because of the limited information and experiences we have to use in order to create an idea.

The author also highlights another inductive bias known as confirmation bias. “Confirmation bias in the tendency to give more weight to evidence that confirms our beliefs than to evidence that challenges them”. The author uses the example of a woman named Elizabeth O’Donovan. One night, she got into an argument with a friend about whether Orion is a winter constellation. Elizabeth insisted that it was not over and over again while her and her friend stood in a parking lot in the middle of December, pointing at Orion. She thought is was some “crazy astronomical phenomenon” because she thought it was a summer constellation. This example proves exactly how confirmation bias was used, since she purposefully neglected evidence that supported a countering claim, since it did not coincide with her beliefs.  

Inductive reasoning is the main way humans make assumptions or guesses in certain situations. It’s what differentiates use from computers. But, there are some implications with inductive reasoning, so be careful. In the end, think before jumping to conclusions and make sure your reasoning is just and well-mannered.