Resolving the Reference Class Problem at Scale

Abstract We draw a distinction between the traditional reference class problem, which describes an obstruction to estimating a single individual probability—which we rename the individual reference class problem —and what we call the reference class problem at scale , which can result when using tools from statistics and machine learning to systematically make predictions about many individual probabilities simultaneously. We argue that scale actually helps to mitigate the reference class problem, and purely statistical tools can be used to efficiently minimize the reference class problem at scale, even though they cannot be used to solve the individual reference class problem.