About a month ago, this rooster appeared in our estate. When I first noticed him, he was happily pecking away in the grass, upsetting the Mynas. Nobody I know knows where he came from, or whom he belongs to. But he looks healthy and he’s not at all bothered by people, so he’s likely to have had some human association.
Similarly, I shouldn’t assume that our resident cockerel is lonely just because he keeps calling and surveying the neighbourhood. I don’t even know if any hens would actually respond to his cock-a-doo-dooing, which, as far as I’m aware, is a territorial call and hence primarily aimed at other roosters.
We all do this all too often: make assumptions based on one or two observations, and draw conclusions from limited information. It’s only natural, since we have to make decisions based on limited information all the time, and we would be completely dysfunctional if we let lack of data paralyse us. But we have to keep reminding ourselves that we are making assumptions, and that what we usually believe to be solid facts – anything from why the chicken used the pedestrian crossing to the number of planets in the solar system – is only valid till further notice.
2 Comments
Yes, I agree that confidence in our conclusions should be proportional to the strength of the data. However I think that facts are overrated in the public perception of science - what is more important is the theoretical framework that the facts help to build, and the testable predictions that the theory generates. A robust theory can produce many useful and dependable applications.
These allow us to make the best of what we currently know, despite the limited information.
You need to provide moe info………….!!!