Monday, July 30, 2007

black swan

The recent release of the book named the black swan got me thinking about the whole deal about induction, scepticism and the lot. What the intro of the book talked of is how we mistake the map for the territory.
Our evolution has programmed us to try and make sense of what happens around us. That however puts a certain limit on our ability to fathom some elements of existance which do not lend themselves to routine thought frameworks and are not crucial for our survival.
An example is quantum mechanics. We have there a system of thought in which we are not using intuition or analogies from sensory world. The ideas are mostly abstract and rarely can be "pictured" in the traditional sense. Now is the faculty of thought that held us in good stead so far become a limitation?