Ian_C. comments on Friedman's "Prediction vs. Explanation" - Less Wrong

7 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 29 September 2008 06:15AM

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Comment author: Ian_C. 29 September 2008 07:36:55AM 0 points [-]

One theory has a track record of prediction, and what is being asked for is a prediction, so at first glance I would choose that one. But the explanation based-one is built on more data.

But it is neither prediction nor explanation that makes things happen in the real world, but causality. So I would look in to the two theories and pick the one that looks to have identified a real cause instead of simply identifying a statistical pattern in the data.