Inference Quotes - Page 4

But deciding not to have children is a very, very hard decision for a woman to make: the atmosphere is worryingly inconducive to saying, "I choose not to," or "it all sounds a bit vile, tbh." We call these women "selfish" The inference of the word "childless" is negative: one of lack, and loss. We think of nonmothers as rangy lone wolves - rattling around, as dangerous as teenage boys or men. We make women feel that their narrative has ground to a halt in their thirities if they don't "finish things" properly and have children.

Caitlin Moran

Mother, Teenage, Children

"How To Be a Woman". Book by Caitlin Moran, 2011.

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No deliberation made by a single person will be successful; the nature of the work which a sovereign has to do is to be inferred from the consideration of both the visible and invisible causes. The clearance of doubts as to whatever is susceptible of two opinions, and the inference of the whole when only a part is seen is possible of decision only by ministers. Hence the king shall sit at deliberation with persons of wide intellect.

Chanakya

Kings, Successful, Two

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How could an argument soothe or settle a controversy when every word is a nest for a bird of doubt? (meaning of words as inferences)

Edmond Jabes

Bird, Doubt, Nests

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...a consistency proof for [any] system ... can be carried out only by means of modes of inference that are not formalized in the system ... itself.

Kurt Gödel

Mean, Math, Consistency

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Any approach to scientific inference which seeks to legitimize it and answer in reponse to complex uncertainty is, for me, a totalitarian parody of a would-be rational learning process.

Adrian Smith

Learning, Would Be, Answers

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We shall say that we have acquaintance with anything of which we are directly aware, without the intermediary of any process of inference of any knowledge of truths.

Bertrand Russell

Language, Process, Acquaintance

Bertrand Russell (2016). “The Problems of Philosophy”, p.60, Bertrand Russell

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In all aspects of life... we define our reality in terms of metaphors and then proceed to act on the basis of the metaphors. We draw inferences, set goals, make commitments, and execute plans, all on the basis of how we in part structure our experience, consciously and unconsciously, by means of metaphor.

George Lakoff

Mean, Commitment, Reality

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When I was twelve years old I thought up an odd trinity: namely, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Devil. My inference wasthat God, in contemplating himself, created the second person of the godhead; but that, in order to be able to contemplate himself, he had to contemplate, and thus to create, his opposite.--With this I began to do philosophy.

Friedrich Nietzsche

God, Father, Philosophy

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Whatever we know without inference is mental.

Bertrand Russell

Knowledge, Knows

Bertrand Russell (2013). “Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Value”, p.240, Routledge

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It is difficult to distinguish deduction from what in other circumstances is called problem-solving. And concept learning, inference, and reasoning by analogy are all instances of inductive reasoning. (Detectives typically induce, rather than deduce.) None of these things can be done separately from each other, or from anything else. They are pseudo-categories.

Frank Smith

Detectives, Pseudo, Done

Frank Smith (2014). “To Think: In Language, Learning and Education”, p.25, Routledge

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With all this talk about the supposed strain in relations [with the Soviet Union], there is an inference that somehow it is our fault. But we didn't kill Russian civilians by shooting down a civilian airplane. We didn't attempt to conquer an adjacent country to ours. We didn't walk out on negotiations and refuse to give a date for when we would resume.

Ronald Reagan

Country, War, Airplane

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The basic formulation, or bare-bones mechanics, of natural selection is a disarmingly simple argument, based on three undeniable facts (overproduction of offspring, variation, and heritability) and one syllogistic inference (natural selection, or the claim that organisms enjoying differential reproductive success will, on average, be those variants that are fortuitously better adapted to changing local environments, and that these variants will then pass their favored traits to offspring by inheritance).

Stephen Jay Gould

Simple, Average, Atheism

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The very foundation of our science is only an inference; far the whole of it rests an the unprovable assumption that, all through the inferred lapse of time which the inferred performance of inferred geological processes involves, they have been going on in a manner consistent with the laws of nature as we know them now.

William Morris Davis

Law, Lapses, Foundation

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A delicate, inexorable lattice of inferences began to assemble themselves, like a crystal, in the old man's mind, shivering, catching the light in glints and surmises.

Michael Chabon

Men, Light, Mind

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The inference is, that God has restated the superiority of the West. God always does like that when a thousand white people surround one dark one. Dark people are always "bad" when they do not admit the Divine Plan like that. A certain Javanese man who sticks up for Indonesian Independence is very lowdown by the papers, and suspected of being a Japanese puppet.

Zora Neale Hurston

Dark, Men, White

Zora Neale Hurston, Alice Walker (1979). “I Love Myself when I Am Laughing ... and Then Again when I Am Looking Mean and Impressive: A Zora Neale Hurston Reader”, p.166, Feminist Press at CUNY

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Some changes of language are to be regretted, as they lead to false inferences, and society is always a loser by mistaking names for things.

James F. Cooper

Names, Loser, Language

"The American Democrat: Or, Hints on the Social and Civic Relations of the United States of America". Book by James F. Cooper, 1838.

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Not only does the psyche exist, but it is existence itself. It is an almost absurd prejudice to suppose that existence can only be physical...We might well say, on the contrary, that physical existence is a mere inference, since we know of matter only in so far as we perceive psychic images mediated by the senses.

Carl Jung

Psychics, Doe, Prejudice

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At some time in the history of the universe, there were no human minds, and at some time later, there were. Within the blink of a cosmic eye, a universe in which all was chaos and void came to include hunches, beliefs, sentiments, raw sensations, pains, emotions, wishes, ideas, images, inferences, the feel of rubber, Schadenfreude, and the taste of banana ice cream.

David Berlinski

Pain, Eye, Ideas

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The dull mind, once arriving at an inference that flatters the desire, is rarely able to retain the impression that the notion from which the inference started was purely problematic.

George Eliot

Mind, Desire, Arriving

George Eliot (1875). “Silas Marner ; And, Scenes of Clerical Life”, p.24

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For many activities, people cannot rely solely on themselves in evaluating their ability level because such judgments require inferences from probabilistic indicants of talent about which they may have limited knowledge. Self-appraisals are, therefore, partly based on the opinions of others who presumably possess evaluative competence

Albert Bandura

Self, People, Levels

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I think we have reached a level in society - with Helen Mirren playing The Queen - when we're not surprised any more. We don't mention names. Yes, it's obvious by inference. But we don't mention names and the film is not up to point fingers at Royalty.

David Suchet

Queens, Thinking, Names

Source: www.indielondon.co.uk

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I may remark parenthetically that the modern apparatus of the theory of small samples, once it goes beyond the determination of its own specially defined parameters and becomes a method for positive statistical inference in new cases, does not inspire me with any confidence unless it is applied by a statistician by whom the main elements of the dynamics of the situation are either explicitly known or implicitly felt.

Norbert Wiener

Determination, Inspire, May

Norbert Wiener (1961). “Cybernetics Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine”, p.25, MIT Press

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Has it been found that bodies of men act with more rectitude or greater disinterestedness than individuals? The contrary of this has been inferred by all accurate observers of the conduct of mankind; and the inference is founded upon obvious reasons. Regard to reputation has a less active influence, when the infamy of a bad action is to be divided among a number than when it is to fall singly upon one.

Alexander Hamilton

Fall, Men, Numbers

Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, Quentin P. Taylor, John Jay (1998). “The Essential Federalist: A New Reading of the Federalist Papers”, p.86, Rowman & Littlefield

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Intellect may arrive at certain inferences, but intellect is an unconsicous phenomenon. You are almost behaving sleepily. Intelligence is awakening, and unless you are fully awake, whatsoever you decide is bound to be wrong somewhere or other.

Rajneesh

May, Awakening, Certain

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The main reason for insisting on the universal Flood as a fact of history and as the primary vehicle for geological interpretation is that God's Word plainly teaches it! No geologic difficulties, real or imagined, can be allowed to take precedence over the clear statements and necessary inferences of Scripture.

Henry M. Morris

Real, Scripture, Facts

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