I can’t believe I’ve forgotten Frost on my other blog… And kontrary to the games, MK Reconciliation inspired me to make her a better kharacter!
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A Predictive Success Example
Predictive success is our best indicator of contact with reality.
A clear illustration comes from the discovery of the planet Neptune in the 19th century. This episode is one of the best demonstrations of what predictive success means in practice.
After the planet Uranus was discovered in 1781, astronomers began carefully measuring its orbit. According to the gravitational theory developed, the planet should follow a predictable path determined by gravitational forces. However, something strange appeared in the data. Uranus did not move exactly where the equations predicted. Its orbit showed small but persistent deviations.
At that point several explanations were possible. One could simply say the observations were messy, the calculations imperfect, or the theory slightly wrong. But two mathematicians Urbain Le Verrier in France and John Couch Adams in England proposed a different idea. They assumed Newton’s theory was correct and asked a deeper question. What unseen object could produce exactly these deviations through gravity? Using Newton’s equations, they calculated the position and approximate mass of a hypothetical planet that had never been observed. In other words, the theory was used to predict the existence of something completely unknown.
In 1846, astronomers pointed telescopes at the predicted region of the sky. They found Neptune almost exactly where the calculations said it should be. This is a powerful example of predictive success. The theory did not just explain known facts; it predicted a new object that nobody had seen before. The world behaved the way the model said it should.
This is precisely the type of situation that philosophers such as Karl Popper considered decisive. A serious theory takes a risk. It says, if the world is structured this way, then we should observe X. If X does not appear, the theory fails. Newtonian gravity survived that test. The prediction could easily have been wrong. The sky could have been empty. But the observation matched the prediction.
Compare that with persuasive narratives that cannot fail. For example, if someone claims that invisible forces influence events but explains every possible outcome as confirmation of the theory, the model never risks contradiction. Because it cannot be wrong, it cannot genuinely be tested. Scientific models gain credibility by doing the opposite. They expose themselves to potential failure.
The deeper lesson is subtle. Predictive success does not prove a theory is perfectly true. Newton’s theory later turned out to be incomplete when Albert Einstein developed general relativity. But for centuries Newton’s model worked extremely well because it captured important real structure in how gravity behaves. So the practical rule is that a model becomes trustworthy not because it sounds convincing, but because the world repeatedly behaves as the model predicts. Or stated more sharply, reality is the final critic of every theory.
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There’s something poetic about those first early flowers that come out on a warm day at the end of winter and die again when frost comes back in March. They’ll return once spring really arrives. But for now, they are too early. The first blooms will die, but the bulbs last to bloom again.
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Which Edition of D&D had the best design/artwork of a Frost Salamander?
First Edition
Second Edition
Third Edition
Fifth Edition
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“i’m ganna take over universe 7!! Not today though….my back is uh….doing this thing….maybe later definitely later.”