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Unknowns comments on Reference class of the unclassreferenceable - Less Wrong
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It doesn't. I simply don't believe in Reference Class Tennis. Experiments show that the Outside View works great... for predicting how long Christmas shopping will take. That is, the Outside View works great when you've got a dozen examples that are no more dissimilar to your new case than they are to each other. By the time you start trying to predict the future 20 years out, choosing one out of a hundred potential reference classes is assuming your conclusion, whatever it may be.
How often do people successfully predict 20 years out - let alone longer - by picking some convenient reference class and saying "The Outside View is best, now I'm done and I don't want to hear any more arguments about the nitpicky details"?
Very rarely, I'd say. It's more of a conversation-halter than a proven mode of thinking about that level of problem, and things in the reference class "unproven conversation halter on difficult problems" don't usually do too well. There, now I'm done and I don't want to hear any more nitpicky details.
"Very rarely, I'd say." I think with a little more effort put into actually investigating the question, we could find a better measure of how often people have made successful predictions of the future 20 years in advance or longer using this method.
Check a source of published predictions, and you'll find some nice statistics on how well entertainers selling Deep Wisdom manage to spontaneously and accidentally match reality. My guess is that it won't be often.