I think implicit in that question was, ‘and how does it differ?’
A friend of mine has a joke in which he describes any arbitrary magic card (and later, things that weren’t magic cards) by explaining how it differed from an Ornithopter (Suq’Ata Lancer is just like an Ornithopter except it’s red instead of an artifact, and it has haste and flanking instead of flying, and it costs 2 and a red instead of 0, and it has 2 power instead of 0. Yup, just like an Ornithopter). The humor lay in the anti-compression—the descriptions were technically accurate, but rather harder to follow than they needed to be.
Eradicating the humor, you could alternately describe a Suq’Ata Lancer as a Gray Ogre with haste and flanking. The class of ‘cards better than Gray Ogre’ is a reference class that many magic players would be familiar with.
Trying to get a handle on the idea of the tulpa, it’s reasonable to ask where to start before you try comparing it to an ornithopter.
Why would “which reference class is x most like” be a “failure mode”? Don’t just word-match to the closest post including the phrase “reference class” which you remember.
When you’re in a dark alley, and someone pulls a gun and approaches you, would it be a “failure mode” to ask yourself what reference class most closely matches the situation, then conclude you’re probably getting mugged?
Saying “uFAI is like Terminator!”—“No, it’s like Matrix!” would be reference class tennis, “which reference class is uFAI most like?” wouldn’t be.
Isn’t this a failure mode with a catchy name?
I think implicit in that question was, ‘and how does it differ?’
A friend of mine has a joke in which he describes any arbitrary magic card (and later, things that weren’t magic cards) by explaining how it differed from an Ornithopter (Suq’Ata Lancer is just like an Ornithopter except it’s red instead of an artifact, and it has haste and flanking instead of flying, and it costs 2 and a red instead of 0, and it has 2 power instead of 0. Yup, just like an Ornithopter). The humor lay in the anti-compression—the descriptions were technically accurate, but rather harder to follow than they needed to be.
Eradicating the humor, you could alternately describe a Suq’Ata Lancer as a Gray Ogre with haste and flanking. The class of ‘cards better than Gray Ogre’ is a reference class that many magic players would be familiar with.
Trying to get a handle on the idea of the tulpa, it’s reasonable to ask where to start before you try comparing it to an ornithopter.
Why would “which reference class is x most like” be a “failure mode”? Don’t just word-match to the closest post including the phrase “reference class” which you remember.
When you’re in a dark alley, and someone pulls a gun and approaches you, would it be a “failure mode” to ask yourself what reference class most closely matches the situation, then conclude you’re probably getting mugged?
Saying “uFAI is like Terminator!”—“No, it’s like Matrix!” would be reference class tennis, “which reference class is uFAI most like?” wouldn’t be.
I think the term is “reference class tennis”.