How many times have you heard, or used the excuse: “I did it before and this never happened”? This argument relies on induction, taking specific experiences and extrapolating them into a general laws. It is at the core of how we learn and make decisions, but sometimes it fails.
Conditions are always changing. The past experiences we learn from happen under different circumstances than the ones that exist when we apply the learning. We are trying to make sense of an infinite universe with finite experience. David Hume famously showed the logical issues with inductive reasoning in “A Treatise of Human Nature”.
Induction is, however, the only way we have of organizing experience and leading our lives. Even Hume admitted he had to leave his skepticism of induction behind to conduct his life. Without it we could not believe that anything outside of what we are directly experiencing exists.
This reality creates an awkward situation where we have to make do with what we have, induction.
1) Continually adapt: Things change. Faster these days than ever before. Closing our eyes, covering our ears and forgetting a contradictory experience will not reverse the change.
2) Collaborate: Individually we cannot experience everything, but through collaboration we can broaden our experience substantially. This is why we have traditions, stories and communities. The scientific community has done this with great success.