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Last evening I had the pleasure of attending a lecture by Frank von Hippel. a distinguished Princeton professor and former assistant director for national security in the White House Office of Science and Technology. The topic of the lecture was nuclear non-proliferation, specifically the current efforts to reduce the amount of fissile materials around the world. Professor von Hippel said that much is being done to remove dangerous fissile materials and reduce nuclear weapons stocks, but, as always, there is still much to be done.
I think there’s a lot of good in removing these fissile materials, especially in states like Russia where they are not always securely monitored, but I’m skeptical as to whether or not this should be the central focus of nonproliferation policies today. Think about the most pertinent nuclear threats today: Iran, North Korea, and India/Pakistan. The latter does not directly concern the immediate interests of U.S. national security (this is not to say that it’s not important, of course), but the first two definitely do. These are the real threats that first need to be addressed by President Obama.
Archive for February 3rd, 2009
Von Hippel Visits Cornell
Posted by dennisshiraev on February 3, 2009
Posted in Campus Insiders | Leave a Comment »
A Case Against Inductive Reasoning
Posted by Oliver Renick on February 3, 2009
So I was re-reading Dennis’ post on intellectual certainty, and an interesting thought occurred to me. First off, I think the post is very fascinating and does bring up some thought-provoking questions that could potentially alter the daily routine involved in much our lives. My issue is in the final paragraph.
I may see a potential flaw in the ending logic. He says that his single experi(ence/ment) with sleep lead him to question how many other things in his daily life could possibly be wrong. Although I clearly see the case against intellectual certainty, I believe he has taken a step too far in possibly applying it to a vast number of other things. When one takes this single experiment and uses it to pose a much larger, overlapping question, they are applying dangerous inductive reasoning beginning with one isolated incidence.
In theory, this would be similar to saying that because 3+11 equals an even number (14), then all sums of two odd numbers is an even number. We know this is true; it is a proven, straightforward, mathematical calculation. Another example would be saying that because this charcoal brick I just touched is hot, every other charcoal brick is hot. However, this becomes more complicated as we realize that various circumstances may change the result from being hot (maybe the charcoal brick hasn’t been heated, or it has been sitting, cooling down for quite some time).
So, just because Dennis’ isolated experiment showed that his intellectual certainty was misleading, I’m not sure how accurate it is to group his other daily routines in the same, somewhat ominous, category. The situations Dennis presents, constant exercise, lifting weights, socializing, and heavy studying, are all affected greatly by varying factors and outside forces.
Of course, this goes back to the ancient philosophical debate about varying types of logic and reasoning. Although both can be very useful, I would say that in the given case of challenging intellectual curiosity, I will side with Aristotle and work from the bottom of the pyramid upwards.
Posted in Miscellaneous | 2 Comments »
