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Shalmanese comments on Mathematical simplicity bias and exponential functions - Less Wrong
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"All models are wrong, some are useful" - George Box
If model X is more useful than model Y, it's probably because model X is closer to the truth than model Y. "All models are wrong" only means that 100% certainty is impossible.
"If model X is more useful than model Y, it's probably because model X is closer to the truth than model Y."
What if model X is tractable in some useful way? Box's emphasis on utility over correctness would be nigh-meaningless if they were the same thing.
Sure. To use Eliezer's example, if we want to fire artillery shells, Newtonian mechanics is more useful than general relativity, because we're more interested in computational speed than in accuracy. But that's not the point that the people who say things like the quote above are usually trying to make. When I hear similar statements, it's from people who say they don't believe in a theory because it's true, but because it's useful for making predictions, as if the two concepts were completely disconnected!
That said, after googling George Box, he's certainly not one of those people. Wikiquote gives another quote from him, which I like better: "Remember that all models are wrong; the practical question is how wrong do they have to be to not be useful."