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Link: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/11/18/more-intuition-building-on-non-empirical-science-three-stories/

[Followup to:\xa0Building Intuitions On Non-Empirical Arguments In Science]

I.

In your travels, you arrive at a distant land. The chemists there believe that when you mix an acid and a base, you get salt and water,\xa0and\xa0a star beyond the cosmological event horizon goes supernova. This is taught to every schoolchild as an important chemical fact.

You approach their chemists and protest: why include the part about the star going supernova? Why not just say an acid and a base make salt and water? The chemists find your question annoying: your new \u201csupernova-less\u201d chemistry makes exactly the same predictions as the standard model! You\u2019re just splitting hairs! Angels dancing on pins! Stop wasting their time!

\u201cBut the part about supernovas doesn\u2019t constrain expectation!\u201d Yes, say the chemists, but removing it doesn\u2019t constrain expectation either. You\u2019re just spouting random armchair speculation that can never be proven one way or the other. What part of \u201cstop wasting our time\u201d did you not understand?

Moral of the story:\xa0It\u2019s too glib to say \u201cThere is no difference between theories that produce identical predictions\u201d. You actually care a lot about which of two theories that produce identical predictions is considered true.

II.