Probably Approximately Correct Quotes

“machine learning is the general field that studies how complex mechanisms can be created without a designer.”
― Leslie Valiant, Probably Approximately Correct: Nature's Algorithms for Learning and Prospering in a Complex World

“In this sense teaching is a much more robust activity than programming, since the learner’s previous knowledge will be applied automatically to the interaction.”
― Leslie Valiant, Probably Approximately Correct: Nature's Algorithms for Learning and Prospering in a Complex World

“philosopher Sextus Empiricus wrote some 1,800 years ago: [The dogmatists] claim that the universal is established from the particulars by means of induction. If this is so, they will effect it by reviewing either all the particulars or only some of them. But if they review only some, their induction will be unreliable, since it is possible that some of the particulars omitted in the induction may contradict the universal. If, on the other hand, their review is to include all the particulars, theirs will be an impossible task, because particulars are infinite and indefinite. Thus it turns out, I think, that induction, viewed from both ways, rests on a shaky foundation. 4”
― Leslie Valiant, Probably Approximately Correct: Nature's Algorithms for Learning and Prospering in a Complex World