It’s an interesting story, but it might not be as silly as it sounds if one considers “ease of explanation” as a metric for how much credence one’s model assigns to a given scenario. (Yes, I agree this is a hackneyed way of modeling stuff.)
Well, the world is a complicated place and we have limited working memory, so our models can only be so good without the use of external tools. In practice, I think looking for reasons why something is true, then looking for reasons why it isn’t true, has been a useful rationality technique for me. Maybe because I’m more motivated to think of creative, sometimes-valid arguments when I’m rationalizing one way or the other.
It’s an interesting story, but it might not be as silly as it sounds if one considers “ease of explanation” as a metric for how much credence one’s model assigns to a given scenario. (Yes, I agree this is a hackneyed way of modeling stuff.)
Unfortunately, this seems to be the default way humans do things.
Well, the world is a complicated place and we have limited working memory, so our models can only be so good without the use of external tools. In practice, I think looking for reasons why something is true, then looking for reasons why it isn’t true, has been a useful rationality technique for me. Maybe because I’m more motivated to think of creative, sometimes-valid arguments when I’m rationalizing one way or the other.