Don't we all do such things all the time? I'll frequently to a friend and say "that movie would have been more interesting if they'd followed the subplot and s

Don't we all do such things all the time? I'll frequently to a friend and say "that movie would have been more interesting if they'd followed the subplot and showed how character X finally did Y". Here I'm starting with a model of the universe, projecting the givens that we were shown, and extrapolating a theory about something else that might happen in that model. And all of it is false. I'm just playing with a model of the world as it might be. And that's all the scientist in the OP was doing, in his mind. The only difference is that I'm saying that the model is fictional, whereas he believes it. But that doesn't make the projections he might make from his model any better or worse than mine.