Okay, I'm really gonna let you have it over this one, as follows:
I've thought it over and: I made a careless comment, downright silly, really, and I apologize for it. You're right about pattern recognition. But I also remember something Elias Canetti wrote: "The leap into the general is so dangerous that it has to be made again and again, and from the same place." I take it that "the same place" is the awareness of the potential dangers of generalizing about people (Canetti was a Jew and I think that's part of what he had in mind). This doesn't mean we don't, or shouldn't generalize. The goal of scientific inquiry is to reach a valid generalization (e.g., a law of nature, such as the instinct to generalize). Without it we couldn't think, period. The point is to do it empirically and with awareness of the stakes.
Also, I'm a Boomer myself and ambivalent and maybe a bit defensive about the rickety old cohort I belong to. I even contradict myself in another comment here.
Okay, I'm really gonna let you have it over this one, as follows:
I've thought it over and: I made a careless comment, downright silly, really, and I apologize for it. You're right about pattern recognition. But I also remember something Elias Canetti wrote: "The leap into the general is so dangerous that it has to be made again and again, and from the same place." I take it that "the same place" is the awareness of the potential dangers of generalizing about people (Canetti was a Jew and I think that's part of what he had in mind). This doesn't mean we don't, or shouldn't generalize. The goal of scientific inquiry is to reach a valid generalization (e.g., a law of nature, such as the instinct to generalize). Without it we couldn't think, period. The point is to do it empirically and with awareness of the stakes.
Also, I'm a Boomer myself and ambivalent and maybe a bit defensive about the rickety old cohort I belong to. I even contradict myself in another comment here.
Anyway,
Peace, Pede.
Fair enough