I embedded this video of a battle between a giant squid and a sperm whale here to illustrate a point. We've been talking about critical thinking in our last few classes. The concept that I tried to explain to everyone last week was "abduction." This describes what happens when we observe something (like what's happening in the video that I embedded here), and then make a logical inference based on that observation. Watch the video and then continue reading.
When you watched the video, you might have made some logical inferences such as…
1) Sperm whales fight against giant squids that are almost the same size.
2) Since the whale won, it's indicates that the whales usually comes out ahead in these battles.
3)Whales can be injured badly by giant squids.
From my research, it seems that sperm whales usually don't pick on giant squids that are fully grown; they try to eat juveniles that are much smaller than them. So, the first inference wouldn't hold up. However, the other two inferences would probably hold up to further evidence. So, this shows that abduction sometimes leads us to logical inferences that are true, but it can't always be trusted.
