The Parable of Mr. Chicken

Pinecone · Post by **Pinecone** » Wed Oct 22, 2003 4:15 pm

The following is lifted shamelessly from the new DFW book, which I've been enjoying since I picked it up on Friday. If you've read Hume before, or even if you haven't, you'll recognize in the story of Mr. Chicken a much more intuitive (and worrying) explanation of the problem of induction than I've heard in a long time:

"If you had the right classes in school, however, you might now recall that the rule or principle you want does exist - its official name is the Principle of Induction. It is the fundamental precept of modern science. Without the Principle of Induction, experiments couldn't confirm a hypothesis, and nothing in the physical universe could be predicted with any confidence at all. There could be no natural laws or scientific truths.

The P.I. states that if some thing x has happened in certain particular circumstances n times in the past, we are justified in believing that the same circumstances will produce x on the (n + 1)th occasion. The P.I. is wholly respectable and authoritative, and it seems like a well-lit exit out of the whole problem. Until, that is, it happens to strike you (as can occur only in very abstract moods or when there's an unusual amount of time before the alarm goes off) that the P.I. is itself merely an abstraction from experience ... and so now what exactly is it that justifies our confidence in the P.I.?

This latest thought may or may not be accompanied by a concrete memory of several weeks spent on a relative's farm in childhood (long story). There were four chickens in a wire coop off the garage, the brightest of whom was called Mr. Chicken. Every morning, the farm's hired man's appearance in the coop area with a certain burlap sack caused Mr. Chicken to get excited and start doing warmup-pecks at the ground, because he knew it was feeding time. It was always around the same time t every morning, and Mr. Chicken had figured out that t(man + sack) = food, and thus was confidently doing his warmup-pecks on that last Sunday morning when the hired man suddenly reached out and grabbed Mr. Chicken and in one smooth motion wrung his neck and put him in the burlap sack and bore him off to the kitchen.

Memories like this tend to remain quite vivid, if you have any. But with the thrust, lying here, being that Mr. Chicken appears now to actually have been correct - according to the Principle of Induction - in expecting nothing but breakfast from that (n + 1)th appearance of man + sack at t. Something about the fact that Mr. Chicken not only didn't suspect a thing but appears to have been wholly justified in not suspecting a thing - this seems concretely creepy and upsetting. Finding some higher-level justification for your confidence in the P.I. seems much more urgent when you realize that, without this justification, our own situation is basically indistinguishable from that of Mr. Chicken.

But the conclusion, abstract as it is, seems inescapable: what justifies our confidence in the Principle of Induction is that it has always worked so well in the past, at least up to now. Meaning that our only real justification for the Principle of Induction is the Principle of Induction, which seems shaky and question-begging in the extreme."

Fixer · Post by **Fixer** » Wed Oct 22, 2003 4:32 pm

Too funny. I like it.

Fishmonger · Post by **Fishmonger** » Wed Oct 22, 2003 5:10 pm

That kind of thing happens all the time. When I was in high school I used to exit the school by scaling a wall covered in Ivy. All previous atempts had taught me that the Ivy was in fact strong enough to hold my weight. I think we all see the horrible accident, So I will simply state that the only thing I hurt was my ego.

Craig

Shyknight · Post by **Shyknight** » Thu Oct 23, 2003 1:38 am

/me is comfortable with living like Mr. Chicken

SothThe69th · Post by **SothThe69th** » Thu Oct 23, 2003 2:29 am

/me strangles Shyknight and puts him in a burlap sack.

Draker · Post by **Draker** » Thu Oct 23, 2003 4:05 am

This is all fine and good as long as you believe TIME as we think we know it actually exists. Think about this: What we call time is not a real thing. It is simply a device, such as a thermometer, used to measure change in all of its multifarioius forms.

It's only because we simply seem to experience this change in a linear fashion that we think time is linear and even exists. There are schools of thought out there that think time is NOT linear, and that it doesn't even really exist! Not only that, but change doesn't even have to be linear. Think of a fog that has various desities in various areas. The dense areas are areas where things are MORE likely to occur, and the less dense areas are places where things are LESS likely to occur. However, change can simply jump from one point to another, regardless of direction and only controlled by this concept of likelihood.

NOW what do you think about the chicken story? Maybe the path the chicken was following jumped a few iterations and is no longer on the predictable path it once was! What scares me is trying to figure out why one path is more likely than another! *SHUDDER*

OK, bad explanation, 'cause, well, I'm not a physicist, but just think about it! Also, I haven't finished reading the book yet. Blargh!

Daemonfly · Post by **Daemonfly** » Thu Oct 23, 2003 5:57 am

FYI, Time has already been discussed here - http://reallifeforums.com/viewtopic.php?t=3460

The chicken just got too comfortable with a daily occurance for it's own good. Mainly a "learned experience" due to not knowing anything else. It learned that sack = food, as thats all that it had experienced up to that point. The final "lesson" was fatal, so even if it did "learn" something new at that final second, it couldn't use it as it's now dinner!

mikehendo · Post by **mikehendo** » Thu Oct 23, 2003 6:43 am

[quote="SothThe69th";p="192581"]*SothThe69th strangles Shyknight and puts him in a burlap sack.[/quote]

Me proceeds to pluck Shyknight, and toss him in the oven. Sure is a big bird you got this year, papa Soth

Monk · Post by **Monk** » Wed Nov 12, 2003 4:02 am

The question now, of course, is do the other 3 chickens learn from Mr. Chicken's fatal assumption, and hide until after the food has been spread and the man with the sack has left.

Ender_Wiggin · Post by **Ender_Wiggin** » Wed Nov 12, 2003 4:54 am

doubtful....maybe if they were chimps or dolphins then they would....

mikehendo · Post by **mikehendo** » Wed Nov 12, 2003 7:55 am

So much for the assumption that chickens are smart.. and necro-posts are bad, mmkay

Monk · Post by **Monk** » Wed Nov 12, 2003 2:09 pm

Well, that's the only problem i have with this description of the Principle of Induction. I agree that if something has been happening the same way consistently, it's a fair assuption to assume it will continue to do so. Without any evidence to the contrary, what other assumption can you possibly make? You could always go through life like one of the sheep in the Hitchhiker's Guide series (I think it was in So Long...) that are constantly surprised by the sunrise, the sunset, the rain, the sunshine, and everything else (except flying saucers). What wasn't mentioned in the parable is the ability to learn from your own and others mistakes. This is why everything is science is called a theory. Even the laws in science are theories. Once something happens that is an exception, we rethink our theories. This usually isn't fatal on more than an individual level, such as Fishmonger's post about climbing a wall of ivy. What we have to be concerned about at a species level are the things that we have no P.I. assumptions about, such as the first time they detonated an atomic weapon. No one was quite sure what would happen, and one of the possibilities was that the atmosphere would be able to sustain the chain reaction, and that they'd turn the earth into a fireball. Obviously that didn't happen, and they've used the P.I. to feel justified in setting off more.

Anyway, I'm done with my rant, since I'm pretty sure I strayed off topic and am not sure I made my point at all.

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