Half-Life of Knowledge
Every subject, profession and industry goes through a process of knowledge discovery that results in a turnover of ideas known as the half-life of knowledge. Some ideas accepted today will become obsolete or be disproven with time. Pessimistic induction points to the fact that historically speaking, decisions based on well-accepted knowledge would often be wrong. If you made all of your decisions based on complete faith in science in the year 1900, some of your decisions would be off.Practical Considerations
It is impractical to distrust all knowledge on the assumption that the future will disprove it. As such, pessimistic induction isn't typically considered a strong or insightful argument. Nevertheless, it may have some value in supporting ideas such as the precautionary principle.| Overview: Pessimistic Induction | ||
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Definition | An argument that points to the history of accepted ideas being disproven with time. | |
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