The author did himself a disservice by attracting chess players to criticize his example that clearly could have been about literally any game more complex than coin flipping that has roughly 50/50 parity.
He could have referred to the NFL or something, maybe that would have helped. The point was to set up the aliens to have a gross approximation of outcome determination that is both accurate and wrong.
The aliens could have decided to use home vs. away teams as their "coin flip" and stopped investigating once they found out that home teams win a bit more, for example, and the "crazy" alien in the parable could suggest that examining only the first play of the game is a better answer. The "crazy" alien would be told to stop because the first play isn't more predictive, but the fact that the alien is looking at gameplay is more "right".
>The author did himself a disservice by attracting chess players to criticize his example
Heh, I think the author's example is fine if the reader gives it a charitable interpretation. The disservice is from all the overly pedantic people who want to argue about chess instead of the philosophy of science.
He could have referred to the NFL or something, maybe that would have helped. The point was to set up the aliens to have a gross approximation of outcome determination that is both accurate and wrong.
The aliens could have decided to use home vs. away teams as their "coin flip" and stopped investigating once they found out that home teams win a bit more, for example, and the "crazy" alien in the parable could suggest that examining only the first play of the game is a better answer. The "crazy" alien would be told to stop because the first play isn't more predictive, but the fact that the alien is looking at gameplay is more "right".