The science of science

Probabilistic models of our thinking

It’s 6:00 AM. The alarm clock is blasting, but you are having a hard time getting out of bed. You don’t feel well. Your muscles are weak, and your head is exploding. After a brief struggle, you manage to call a doctor and list all the symptoms. Your sore throat makes speaking painful.

“It’s probably just the flu“, she says.

Interactions like this are everyday occurrences. Yet, we hardly think about the reasoning process behind them. After all, you could have been hungover.

Similarly, if the police find a murder weapon at your house, they’ll suspect that you are the killer. The two are related, but not the same. For instance, the murder weapon could have been planted.

The bulk of humanity’s knowledge is obtained in this manner: we collect evidence, then explain it with various hypotheses.

How do we infer the underlying cause from observing the effect? Most importantly, how can we avoid fooling ourselves into false conclusions?

You are (probably) not surprised: there’s mathematics behind the …