(2020-04-10) ZviM The One Mistake Rule

Zvi Mowshowitz: The One Mistake Rule. If a model gives a definitely wrong answer anywhere, it is useless everywhere.

All models are wrong. That does not make them useless. What makes them useless is when they are giving answers that you know are definitely wrong. You need to fix that, if only by having the model more often spit out “I don’t know.”

if you want to use Newtonian Physics, you need to be aware that it will give wrong answers in relativistic situations, and therefore slightly wrong answers in other places, and introduce the relevant error bars.

Of course, a wrong prediction of what is probably going to happen is not definitely wrong, in this sense. An obviously wrong probability is definitely wrong no matter the outcome