That David Hume, he wrote a book, So I thought I would take a look: Then all my time it did consume - He wrote a book, that David Hume To write his tome, he had no cause, For skeptical of cause he was: No he, no self, was there at home, He had no cause to write this tome Why read or write, if naught exists? Yet on and on, the book persists: A skeptic lacking one insight -- If naught exists, why read or write?
Behavior is often called “rational”
When it uses mathematical probabilities
To predict the future
A moment’s thought, however
Causes us to realize
We don’t know future probabilities
The world doesn’t work like a roulette wheel
Where there are a finite number
Of contrived outcomes; nevertheless –
The usual assumption is that
Future probability
Is identical to past frequency
Which is irrational
Therefore, in order to be rational
We must be irrational
Before you dismiss all of this
As so much logic chopping
Consider
The amount of modern life
Dictated to us
By people claiming
With high mathematical probability
To know the future
Of the entire planet or universe
The solution is not to dispense with predictions
(Which, it must be admitted,
Is what the author of these words
Does for a living)
But to couch them
With due humility
As to the limits of such things
And not use them
As a giant con
Designed to fool
The mathematically uninitiated
