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Tuesday, April 14, 2020

Fleeting thoughts: Inductive Conclusion as Hypothetical Reasoning, or what the viewpoint of quantum information is

Any inductive conclusion is a hypothetical reasoning. Any finite set of absolutely reliable data is not sufficient for a deductive conclusion on their base. Thus any inductive conclusion suggests a hypothesis and respectively, its choice among all possible alternative hypotheses. That hypothesis complements the finite set of available reliable data so that it is able to imply a necessary conclusion.
There is a special case: a “zero” hypothesis of “Hypotheses non fingo”. It means the hypothesis that the available data are not only sufficient, but also necessary condition for the conclusion.
As a corollary of its hypothetical essence, Popper’s (1935) falsifiability can be interpreted as a principle stating that any available data cannot be ever a necessary condition for an ultimate conclusion. However, that hypothesis has the advantage to be the simplest one. Occam’s razor remains just it. The principle of maximal entropy formalizes it quantitatively: One should choice that function approximating the available reliable data, the entropy of which is maximal.
Nevertheless earlier or later, it will be ever refused therefore being replaced by one of those “non-zero hypotheses” anyway consistent to any preliminary subset of reliable data. The non-zero hypotheses can be compared with each other about the probability for each of them to turn out the future zero and thus dominating hypothesis on the base of the data available only till now. Furthermore and quantitatively, any distribution of non-maximal entropy can be in interpreted as hidden factors or variables thinkable as a single one, which is just what generates the shift from the maximal entropy distribution.
All this can be very well represented and further investigated in terms of quantum information.  

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