Induction vs. Deduction

May 23, 2007

Let’s say you’re writing a story and you are faced with this story encoding: A Main Character Symptom of Induction and a Main Character Response of Deduction. Huh? Encoding the Objective Story of Success and the Main Character’s Resolve of Change was easy. But this…this might be one to put on hold.

Or maybe not.

The Dramatica dictionary defines these two thusly:

Induction – [Element] – a means of determining possibility – Induction is the process of thought that determines where an unbroken line of causal relationships leads. Deduction – [Element] – a process of thought that determines certainty – Deduction is the process of thought that arrives at a determination of what is by limiting out all that cannot be.

Now, personally, Deduction is easier to understand right off the bat – probably because of the connection with Sherlock Holmes and his method of solving crimes (he was a master of deduction, right?). You’re presented with a bunch of information and with that, you can distill it down into something smaller - that’s Deduction.

For some reason though, I always forget the definition of Induction. It always sounds like some Mechanical Engineering thing to me.

Sandy Stone had a good visual explanation of the two terms. Both items are methods of determining something - both describe a method of thought process. When asked what the difference between the two was, Sandy provided this -

Deduction:

Whereas Induction looks something like this:

Ding! Light bulb!

With Induction, you’re taking a small piece of information and using that to determine the possibility of things on an even larger scale.

The explanation came up as a result of our analysis of the South Park movie. In it, the parents are horrified to see their kids using foul language the likes of which they’ve never heard before. The destructive influence of the latest Terrence and Phillip movie reverberates through the small mountain town.

But that’s not the real problem.

The real problem occurs when the parents take this little piece of information (the kids cursing) and turn it into something ridiculously grand. I believe the line from the song goes something like (and I apologize in advance for the adult situation here), “If you don’t stop cursing you’ll end up doing hand jobs for cash.”

The parents have taken the reasonably small infraction of saying bad words and, by using Induction, have transformed it into a vulgar, yet hilarious, premonition of the boy’s future. A fine example of problematic Induction in action.