Anonymous_Coward4 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: Anonymous_Coward4 29 September 2008 01:04:08PM 0 points [-]

Throughout these replies there is a belief that theory 1 is 'correct through skill'. With that in mind it is hard to come to any other conclusion than 'scientist 1 is better'.

Without knowing more about the experiments, we can't determine if theory 1's 10 good predictions were simply 'good luck' or accident.

If your theory is that the next 10 humans you meet will have the same number of arms as they have legs, for example...

There's also potential for survivorship bias here. If the first scientist's results had been 5 correct, 5 wrong, we wouldn't be having this discussion about the quality of their theory-making skills. Without knowing if we are 'picking a lottery winner for this comparison' we can't tell if those ten results are chance or are meaningful predictions.