Deutsch and Yudkowsky on scientific explanation
Science aims to come up with good theories about the world - but what makes a theory good? The standard view is that the key traits are predictive accuracy and simplicity. Deutsch focuses instead on the concepts of explanation and understanding : a good theory is an explanation which enhances our understanding of the world. This is already a substantive claim, because various schools of instrumentalism have been fairly influential in the philosophy of science. I do think that this perspective has a lot of potential, and later in this essay explore some ways to extend it. First, though, I discuss a few of Deutsch's arguments which I don't think succeed, in particular when compared to the bayesian rationalist position defended by Yudkowsky. To start, Deutsch says that good explanations are “hard to vary”, because every part of the explanation is playing a role. But this seems very similar to the standard criterion of simplicity. Deutsch rejects simplicity as a criterion because