When the evidence leaves us with a choice among hypotheses of unequal strength, how is the choice to be made? Caution would counsel us to choose the weakest, the hypothesis that asserts the least, since it is the least likely to fail us later. But the principle of maximum safety quickly reduces to absurdity; for it always dictates the choice of a hypothesis that does not go beyond the evidence at all.
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Nelson Goodman (1961) studied this question.
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