Reference class problem

Okay, so let's say you're a kid who wants to grow up to be a basketball player. You practice really hard and you think you're pretty good, but you're not sure if you'll be successful because you don't know how good other basketball players are.

The reference class problem is kind of like that. It's a problem that comes up when you're trying to predict something, like how successful you'll be as a basketball player, because you don't have enough information about other similar situations.

Imagine you want to know the chances of a certain event happening, like a sports team winning a game. You might look at similar past events, like other games the team has played, to get an idea of how likely they are to win. But what if there aren't enough similar past events to look at? That's the reference class problem.

It's like trying to predict how fast a new car will go based on the speed of other cars you've seen, but the new car is a different make and model so you don't really know how fast it is.

So, when we have the reference class problem, we don't have enough information to make a good prediction because we don't have enough similar situations to look at. It's like trying to guess how good a basketball player will be without knowing if they are taller, stronger or faster than other basketball players.