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taw comments on Contrarianism and reference class forecasting - Less Wrong
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I think taw's problem is just a case of the more general and simple problem of what kind of similarity is required for induction?.
And it's unwise to use political issues as case studies of unsolved philosophical problems.
Not really, induction problems philosophers talk about are pure theory, and totally irrelevant to daily life. Everybody knows blue/green are correct categories, while grue/bleen are not.
Figuring out proper reference class on the other hand, is a serious problem of applied rationality.
Philosophers invented grue/bleen in order to be obviously incorrect categories, yet difficult to formally separate from the intuitively correct ones. There are of course less obvious cases, but the elucidation of the problem required them to come up with a particularly clear example.
I don't know about "bleen", but "grue" is perfectly sensible as the category of "things that may eat you if you venture around Zork without a light".