There Are No Black Swans, We Have No Weapons

The New York Times has an enter­tain­ing piece on the log­i­cal flaws in demand­ing that Iraq dis­prove a neg­a­tive in pro­vid­ing evi­dence of their lack of weapons of mass destruction.

Of course, Enlight­en­ment poster boy David Hume, who noted these prob­lems with induc­tion, came down on the side of common sense, sug­gest­ing that if there is no cer­tain knowl­edge avail­able, one should take an edu­cated guess. (I’m para­phras­ing. Obvi­ously.) There­fore, though my obser­va­tions of US for­eign policy deci­sions are unre­li­able, and I cannot prop­erly infer any gen­eral rules about US for­eign policy from those obser­va­tions, it is nonethe­less appro­pri­ate to assert with a rea­son­able degree of cer­tainty that the US will do what­ever it damn well pleases.

Posted at 12pm on 16/12/02 by Jack Mottram to the politics category.
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