4 ms·

You're squabbling over semantics and ignoring the larger point. Someone can put together the best-possible estimate today based on all the information available

• jodrellblank 7y ago
  Why does it? You could put together the best-possible weather prediction today based on all the information available, and this estimate could still be wrong, through no fault of the meterorologist. And what we'd learn is that the meteorologist cannot predict the weather and we shouldn't rely on their predictions as much in future. We don't call the meteorologist "accurate" because they couldn't do better, we call them "inaccurate" because they were inaccurate.
  • whack 7y ago
    The fact that "weather" has no free will, but humans do, makes your analogy unworkable. If a meteorologist has all available information at time-T, as well as the computing power to crunch all the numbers and run a simulation, it's impossible for them to mispredict the weather. The very definition of free-will means that the above is impossible for predicting human behavior. Even if you had perfect information, models and computing power, you still can't predict human behavior with 100% accuracy. A good analyst may be able to predict human behavior with higher levels of accuracy than others - but even a perfect analyst with perfect information will still make mistakes due to free will, which makes it qualitatively different compared to a meteorologist.