There are two major ways of assessing the quality of our understanding of a phenomenon: Prediction, and Explanation.
Prediction feels extremely powerful because it seems to be proving its deep understanding by having reality speak on its behalf. You want proof that I understand how the planets move? Well let me tell you exactly where Jupiter will be in the sky on an arbitrary day.
That’s powerful indeed.
But David Deutsch has an idea that I think is even more powerful, which is Explanation. And he uses a brilliant example to demonstrate why it’s superior to Prediction, though the example itself comes from Bertrand Russell.
The turkey professor
He asks us to imagine a turkey on a turkey farm in the United States who holds a scientific lecture for a number of his fellow turkeys on the farm.
To prove he understands the farm, where they’ve all been for the last 9 months and it’s currently early November, he is asked to predict the feeding time on November 25th of this year. And then December 12th.
The turkey professor pulls out a whiteboard and proceeds to map out all the data he has on feeding times, and says confidently that on November 25th, they’ll be fed right after sunrise. And he says he knows this is true because he has clear data that nobody can refute.
Day after day he is proven right, and he ultimately convinces everyone he’s correct.
But despite all this data, and accuracy, and precision that he’s provided, this understanding lacks a critical component. He doesn’t have an explanation for “why” they are fed every day after sunrise.
Turns out this is critical information that will drastically affect the accuracy of his predictions.
On November 25th, it turns out, they are not in fact fed after sunrise. Because all those turkeys are dead: killed the day before for Thanksgiving.
He had great data about sunrises and feeding times, but he didn’t have the crucial fact that they were turkeys on a turkey farm.
In other words, he could predict parts of the system, but he couldn’t explain why it worked the way it did. And in this way, according to David Deutsch, Prediction is subordinate and inferior to Explanation as a way of understanding the world.
The system is not bidirectional, and this one-way function further illustrates why one is better than the other. With Explanation you can usually make predictions, but with predictions alone you often lack an explanation for why they’re accurate.
Explanations at any level
This is why I prioritize high-quality explanations of things. And it’s why I so highly value the intelligence of frontier AI. When a modern AI is used properly, it’s able to produce extraordinary explanations of nearly anything. And at any level of abstraction, from mathematics and bits and bytes, to extremely concise prose.
One of my favorite AI skills I’ve ever made (in 2024 via Fabric) is called 5 Levels, which in LifeOS you hit via the /ws shortcut (for /WordSummary).
It takes any idea and explains it to you at n levels of concision.
So ws 5 gives you 5 levels.
- 5 words
- 4 words
- 3 words
- 2 words
- 1 word
Here’s a run against the input of “what russian literature teaches us.”
/ws 5 what russian literature teaches us1
And here’s the response:
5. Suffering, faced honestly, can redeem
4. All answer for all
3. Conscience outlasts tyranny
2. Beauty saves
1. Redemption1
2
3
4
5
I just love these increasingly compressed summaries. When I saw this in 2024 with Fabric, it instantly felt like true intelligence to me.
Explanation is understanding
I think, ultimately, the truth being revealed by this contrast between prediction and explanation is that explanation requires understanding. And understanding is ultimately what we’re seeking when we engage in this type of pursuit.
Whether it’s physics, or psychology, or AI, or whatever, if I sit down to learn about something I don’t want just to be able to coldly predict its behavior.
I want to understand it.
And explanation is wholly and inexorably tied to understanding. It’s the mechanism by which one transfers understanding from one person to another.
I’m Team Explanation.
