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Assume (accept without questioning) that it’s a property of the universe that any group of 2 horses are the same color.

Now, say you have a group of 3 horses, A, B, and C. You can use your knowledge about groups of 2 horses here: A and B must be the same color because they are a group of 2 horses. B and C must be the same color for the same reason. So all the horses are the same color.

You can now use the proof for groups of 3 horses to prove the same fact about groups of 4 horses, and so on.

The flawed inductive proof tries to generalize this argument to all groups of n and n+1 horses. That is, assume the property is true for groups of n horses, and show that it logically follows that it’s true for groups of n+1 horses. The structure of the argument is the same as my 2/3 horses example. However, you can’t use an argument like that for any value of n, as it isn’t true for n=1. That is, it’s not true that if every group of 1 horses is the same color (a true fact in nature) then it follows that every pair of horses is the same color.



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