ABSTRACT
Whether this conversation ever took place or not, it illustrates the fact that some people are afraid to make generalizations. Healthy skepticism can be a virtue, but too much is not healthy. Skeptics like to quote the old paradox, "All generalizations are false, including this one." Yet if we don't generalize, we never learn from experience. Does every object in the world have to be dropped from a height before we believe that all objects fall? What do we conclude when someone drops a gas-filled balloon and it goes up instead of down?
