This is a really important principle. You haven’t explained a thing if you wouldn’t be confused by that thing’s absence.
ETA: This point is very similar to one of Eliezer’s observations:
Your strength as a rationalist is your ability to be more confused by fiction than by reality. If you are equally good at explaining any outcome, you have zero knowledge.
There is a subtle distinction, though. In that post, the emphasis is on noticing when your theory contradicts a reported fact. Eliezer points out that you should either modify your theory or deny the reported fact. You shouldn’t fall into the common failure mode of concocting some improbable scenario in which the fact could have occurred without contradicting the theory.
I take Alicorn’s point to be about noticing when your theory neither contradicts nor implies a reported fact. The emphasis here is on avoiding the failure mode of convincing yourself that the reported fact is just what you would expect to happen, given your theory.
This is a really important principle. You haven’t explained a thing if you wouldn’t be confused by that thing’s absence.
ETA: This point is very similar to one of Eliezer’s observations:
There is a subtle distinction, though. In that post, the emphasis is on noticing when your theory contradicts a reported fact. Eliezer points out that you should either modify your theory or deny the reported fact. You shouldn’t fall into the common failure mode of concocting some improbable scenario in which the fact could have occurred without contradicting the theory.
I take Alicorn’s point to be about noticing when your theory neither contradicts nor implies a reported fact. The emphasis here is on avoiding the failure mode of convincing yourself that the reported fact is just what you would expect to happen, given your theory.
Very true.
However, my point was more that this doesn’t exactly conflict with evopsych either.
Of course, the question if evopsych actually does any useful predictions is still open. :)