For some things (especially concrete things like animals or toothpaste products), it is easy to find a useful reference class, while for other things it is difficult to find which possible reference class, if any, is useful. Some things just do not fit nicely enough into an existing reference class to make the method useful—they are unclassreferencable, and it is unlikely to be worth the effort attempting to use the method, when you could just look at more specific details instead. (“Unclassreferencable” suggests a dichotomy, but it’s more of a spectrum.) ETA: I see this point has already been made here.
Humans naturally use an ad-hoc method that is like reference class forecasting (that may not be perfect or completely rational, but does a reasonable job sometimes). It is useful when we first encounter something and do not yet have enough specific details to evaluate it on its own terms. Once we have those details, the forecasting method is not needed. We use forecasting to get a heuristic on which things are worth us investigating further, so we can make that more detailed evaluation. Often something that is unclassreferencable is more worth investigating—we are curious about things that do not fit nicely into our existing categories.
There are a couple of ways promoters of a product/idea can exploit humans’ natural forecasting habits. Sometimes the phrase “defies categorisation” or “doesn’t fit into the normal genres” is applied to a new piece of music, to suggest that it is unclassreferencable and therefore worth checking out (which is better than a potential listener lumping it into a category that they don’t like). On the other hand, sometimes promoters purposefully put themselves into a reference class, hoping that noone investigates finer details—like a new product claiming to be “environmentally friendly”, or people wearing certain clothes to appear to have higher status.
Let me know if I’m suffering from man-with-hammer syndrome here, but it seems reference class forecasting is a useful way to think about many promotional strategies in a more systematic way.
Handle: arbimote
Gender: Male
Age: 22 (born 1987)
Location: Australia
Occupation: Student of computer science
I’ve been lurking since May 2009. My views on some issues that are often brought up on LW are:
It’s a good idea to sign up to cryonics if you have the money, due to a Pascal’s Wager type argument. I have not signed up, since I do not yet have the money (and AFAIK there are further complications due to being in Australia).
It is possible and desirable for humans to create AGI.
MWI seems intuitive to me, but I have not read enough about the subject to form an decent estimate on its correctness.
I feel like I should pad out this intro with more information, but that’ll have to do for now.