Inductive Reasoning Aptitude | Hacker News Reader

Inductive Reasoning Aptitude

en.wikipedia.org

23 pointsgodelmachine8 comments

„Inductive reasoning aptitude is often counter-productive in fields like sales where tolerance is very important, because highly inductive people tend to be good at seeing faults in others.“ That is huge BS on very many levels. 1) Good sales is all about pattern recognition (e.g. in order to understand why someone wants to buy) 2) I wouldn‘t know why you need to be particularly tolerant as a sales person 3) In my experience „smart people“ see less faults in others / are more likely to understand where weaknesses come from. So saying if you are good at inductive reasoning = you are more judgmental is BS.

You’re absolutely right. On first read of the article I found that statement amusing because I could see the truth in it. But after reading your perspective, I see where inductive reasoning has provided a tremendous amount of value in sales. Maybe the author meant inductive reasoning’s relationship to long-lasting interpersonal relationships.

Is wikipedia, please feel free to update

Thanks for the nudge! I was too lazy at the time and ranted here instead (which probably took longer than making the edit would have). I just edited the article and removed the questionable section with my edit. (And it was faster than writing my original comment - including the account creation process on wikipedia)

I think that what the author was trying to convey is that trying to apply rational reasoning to what people tell you often ends up discovering a lot of "fallacies" if you don't intentionally try to understand the hidden context

"Inductive reasoning is very useful for scientists, auto mechanics, system integrators, lawyers, network engineers, medical doctors, system administrators and members of all fields where substantial diagnostic or data interpretation work is needed."

Working with software requirements has often led to discussions that I could picture happening in a courtroom.

I've also found myself "debugging" contracts and vendor RFPs, so a few of these parallel non-dev fields aren't a surprise.

Seeing car mechanic listed, however, makes me wonder if I should be looking into a new potential way to pay the bills, once white collar tech loses its lustre.

"Seeing car mechanic listed, however, makes me wonder if I should be looking into a new potential way to pay the bills, once white collar tech loses its lustre."

I feel in the future, cars will not have mechanics. Consider the reliability of a large box with a battery and electric motor. By the time something breaks, you trade it in. Perhaps you will just "lease" them until it wears out and pick up another one.

On a related note, a relative was an auto-mechanic. He left the field many years ago citing that automakers no longer want you to fix cars, and the cost of just getting the car info (there is some kind of subscription model there) was killing it.

I've long felt that I was good at interpretting really big sets of particulars and intuitively feeling out the solution, while unfortunately pretty bad at linear problems with a small number of variables...like basic math or conveying a simple piece of information in a sentence in a non-confusing way. Not sure if inductive reasoning is the aptitude I possess and I'm keen to test myself more. The example question in the article was easy and I feel I have a gift for quickly mastering new GUIs/shortcuts but that doesn't seem like a comprehensive assessment yet.

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