Nassim Nicholas Taleb on Inductive reasoning

“What is easier to remember, a collection of facts glued together, or a story, something that offers a series of logical links? Causality is easier to commit to memory. ...What is induction exactly? ...It is very handy, as the general takes much less room in one's memory than a collection of particulars. The effect of such compression is the reduction in the degree of detected randomness.”

“The major problem with inference... is that those whose profession it is to derive conclusions from data often fall into the trap faster and more confidently... The more data we have, the more likely we are to drown in it. For common wisdom... is to base... decision making on the following principle: It is very unlikely for someone to perform... well in a consistent fashion without doing something right. ...[I]f someone performed better... in the past then there is a great[er] chance of performing better than the crowd in the future... But... [a] small knowledge of probability can lead to worse results than no knowledge at all.”