I think you’re completely right, this is a special case of the problem of induction. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has a wonderfully exhaustive article about it that also discusses subjective Bayesianism at length. Among other things, that article offers a simple recommendation for taw’s original problem: intersect your proposed reference classes to get a smaller and more relevant reference class.
Agreed with the first part and with the heuristic, but taw is using the possibility of politicization as an element of reference class membership. Honestly, I wouldn’t even consider global warming to be a “political issue”. The science seems completely trivial to understand at the object level.
Not really, induction problems philosophers talk about are pure theory, and totally irrelevant to daily life. Everybody knows blue/green are correct categories, while grue/bleen are not.
Figuring out proper reference class on the other hand, is a serious problem of applied rationality.
Everybody knows blue/green are correct categories, while grue/bleen are not.
Philosophers invented grue/bleen in order to be obviously incorrect categories, yet difficult to formally separate from the intuitively correct ones. There are of course less obvious cases, but the elucidation of the problem required them to come up with a particularly clear example.
I think taw’s problem is just a case of the more general and simple problem of what kind of similarity is required for induction?.
And it’s unwise to use political issues as case studies of unsolved philosophical problems.
I think you’re completely right, this is a special case of the problem of induction. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has a wonderfully exhaustive article about it that also discusses subjective Bayesianism at length. Among other things, that article offers a simple recommendation for taw’s original problem: intersect your proposed reference classes to get a smaller and more relevant reference class.
Agreed with the first part and with the heuristic, but taw is using the possibility of politicization as an element of reference class membership. Honestly, I wouldn’t even consider global warming to be a “political issue”. The science seems completely trivial to understand at the object level.
I’d be shocked if it is.
Disambiguate.
The logic used and the predictions made are trivial. But the underlying facts and observations have been (politically, I presume) called into question. For instance in the recent CRU possibly-scandal, see Eric Raymond saying CRU published fake data and Willis Eschenbach describing how the CRU illegally denied FOIA requests for their weather data and even threatened to destroy them to prevent others from trying to replicate their studies.
Because this issue is so heavily politicized, I for one have no clear idea of the real extent of GW danger.
Not really, induction problems philosophers talk about are pure theory, and totally irrelevant to daily life. Everybody knows blue/green are correct categories, while grue/bleen are not.
Figuring out proper reference class on the other hand, is a serious problem of applied rationality.
Philosophers invented grue/bleen in order to be obviously incorrect categories, yet difficult to formally separate from the intuitively correct ones. There are of course less obvious cases, but the elucidation of the problem required them to come up with a particularly clear example.
I don’t know about “bleen”, but “grue” is perfectly sensible as the category of “things that may eat you if you venture around Zork without a light”.