[TeMPOraL]

> No thinking-based solution, be it logic or something else can work if you cannot predict your environment. It does not matter if logic is flawless or not. It is misleading to think about it as putting in the wrong assumptions, rather it is that in an unpredictable environment you cannot know what the right assumptions are.

Of course there is a solution that can do this, it's called probability theory and it was invented exactly for this - for dealing with uncertainty and unpredictability. Moreover, I don't know where this meme that IT people/geeks/smart people use "logic" came from, it's nonsense and it must die now. Reality runs on probability theory, not by high-school logic.

Also I think that those smart people are getting things right, the "curse" seems to me to be partly jealousy of the less smart (so they "those smarter guys are actually dumb" to boost their self-esteem [0]) and partly the fact that many things in this world are actually pointless nonsense that the society cultivates because, well, not everyone is smart. Many people get labeled "geeks" or "introverts" because they couldn't possibly care less about the soap operas average person play out in their lives.

[0] - I've seen this behavior countless of times when objectively better schools, universities, courses, or even TED gets called "elitistic" and thus becomes bad/stupid in the eyes of those who're outside of the "elite" group.

[jorleif]

Probability theory is great, but there are still environments that are unpredictable enough that experimentation is the only alternative. Think of science, for example; If probability theory combined with past experience was enough, there would be no point in doing experiments.

Probability theory can only give you the best estimate from the past. If the future is in any way different from the past, for instance because the past gives insufficient information about the process in question, the prediction will still often be wrong, and you are back to experimentation rather than thinking.