Induction

Talking to a friend (who is perhaps the only person I know personally who is interested in this stuff) about knowledge and specifically the problem of probabilities and frequencies and also of induction (the idea that our observations is how we get knowledge and then predict the future)

 It all comes down to 1 thing really - knowledge and the process that creates knowledge which is explained by Popperian epistemology. Induction does appear to contain some knowledge and appears to be useful. However Induction is not true, not that it happens and it is false, but rather induction does not happen at all - we always have theory first and then we attribute it to induction. However, the reason induction (or what we think of as induction) contains knowledge in some instances is because it could be part of an explanatory theory. The sun rises in the east everyday and an inductive theory of that would be like - “the sun has risen in the east until now and based on that it will be rising in the east again tomorrow”.  A valid theory that makes this "induction" true would sound like “the sun rises in the east due to the direction of rotation of the earth and will continue to do so until 5 billion years from now unless some knowledge creating entity decides to change that”. Now this theory is not induction but perfectly “justifies” the induction and is true. 

So inductive results (or what we think of as inductive results) are subsets of good explanatory theories which are true for some time. All this is a mirage anyway (since induction does not happen), but this explains why someone who mistakenly thinks induction happens would do so.