Friedman's "Prediction vs. Explanation"

Eliezer Yudkowsky

We do ten experiments. A scientist observes the results, constructs a theory consistent with them, and uses it to predict the results of the next ten. We do them and the results fit his predictions. A second scientist now constructs a theory consistent with the results of all twenty experiments.

The two theories give different predictions for the next experiment. Which do we believe? Why?

One of the commenters links to Overcoming Bias, but as of 11PM on Sep 28th, David's blog's time, no one has given the exact answer that I would have given. It's interesting that a question so basic has received so many answers.

David D. Friedman asks:

We do ten experiments. A scientist observes the results, constructs a theory consistent with them, and uses it to predict the results of the next ten. We do them and the results fit his predictions. A second scientist now constructs a theory consistent with the results of all twenty experiments.

The two theories give different predictions for the next experiment. Which do we believe? Why?

My theory after seeing all 20 experiments is:

The first in the series will be 'A'
The second in the series will be 'B'
The third in the series will be 'C'
The fourth in the series will be 'D'
The fifth in the series will be 'E'
The sixth in the series will be 'F'
The seventh in the series will be 'G'
The eighth in the series will be 'H'
The ninth in the series will be 'I'
The tenth in the series will be 'J'
The eleventh in the series will be 'K'
The twelfth in the series will be 'L'
The thirteenth in the series will be 'M'
The fourteenth in the series will be 'N'
The fifteenth in the series will be 'O'
The sixteenth in the series will be 'P'
The eighteenth in the series will be 'Q'
The twentieth in the series will be 'R'
The twenty first in the series will be a camel.

Those guys who have the theories "Each experiment will give a successive letter of the alphabet" and "Each experiment will give the next ASCII character" may be 'equally valid or invalid' but, well, they lack creativity, don't you think?

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Friedman's "Prediction vs. Explanation"

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Friedman's "Prediction vs. Explanation"

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