I'm also not impressed. He asserts blithely that "the goal is not interpretability, but accurate information", that is, only predictive ability matters. Maybe this is true in some domains, but in my experience scientists usually give a shit about what the hidden function is and are trying to learn how it behaves. No one in science wants to be left with a black box that you can't move past, they want a deeper understanding of the underlying phenomenon.
I don’t think that’s what Breiman is saying. He means useful and reliable information. The point is not just prediction but also actionable information about variables. Look at the 3 examples.
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I'm also not impressed. He asserts blithely that "the goal is not interpretability, but accurate information", that is, only predictive ability matters. Maybe this is true in some domains, but in my experience scientists usually give a shit about what the hidden function is and are trying to learn how it behaves. No one in science wants to be left with a black box that you can't move past, they want a deeper understanding of the underlying phenomenon.
I don’t think that’s what Breiman is saying. He means useful and reliable information. The point is not just prediction but also actionable information about variables. Look at the 3 examples.