our beliefs are not necessarily true. Instead, they are probabilistically true. This point was made (and made famous) by the philosopher David Hume, who was arguably the first thinker to fully grasp both the import and the limitation of inductive reasoning. To borrow his much-cited example: How can I be sure that all swans are white if I myself have seen only a tiny fraction of all the swans that have ever existed? If the world were always uniform, consistent, and predictable, I could trust that I am right about this induction (and about all inductions). Unfortunately, as Hume noted, nothing
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