Where direct verification is unavailable, identify a thing by whether it exhibits the characteristics of the category.
The test is what most practical identification actually uses, since the defining property is usually unobservable and the correlates are not. It is sound in proportion to how costly mimicry is. Where imitating the characteristics is cheap, the test selects for imitators, which is why it works for birds and fails for confidence tricks.
In practice
- A regulator who identifies a bank by what it does rather than by its licence has applied the test correctly.
- A hiring process that screens for the visible markers of competence selects for people who acquired the markers.
- Standing
- A statement of abductive inference. Its weakness is the same as abduction's: mimicry defeats it, and the cases where identification matters most are the cases someone had reason to disguise.
- Further reading
- Wikipedia
- Subject
- Decision-making & Reasoning
- Essay
- Razors, rules and the tools of careful thought