The quote in that link makes a good point: If one gives you an excuse to be lazy, then you might be privileging the hypothesis; it could be that it was only raised to the level of attention so that you can avoid work. Thus, the lazy choice really does get a big hit to its prior probability for being lazy.
But it’s still false that the other one is probably right. In general, if a human is choosing between two theories, they’re both probably insanely wrong. For rationalists, you can charitably drop “insanely” from that description.
Your first paragraph is a good analysis (enough to merit an upvote of the comment as a whole). Your second seems redundant; I don’t think anyone would interpret the quoted phrase of non-technical English to mean that you should actually raise your estimate of the theory that doesn’t permit laziness relative to other theories not under consideration, and if you have two theories both of which are equally wrong, it doesn’t matter much what you do to differentiate them.
Paul Graham “What You’ll Wish You’d Known” http://paulgraham.com/hs.html
Just because you are choosing between two theories, doesn’t mean one of them is right.
Atheism is an excellent excuse for skipping church.
Believing there’s no gold under your yard is an excellent excuse for not digging it up.
And adopting a never ending ideological battle with the majority of your community more than makes up for the effort saved.
If you just wanted to be lazy, there’s always agnosticism.
Doesn’t always work for me...
Reversed stupidity is not intelligence!
Almost the same as the one Eliezer used here
The quote in that link makes a good point: If one gives you an excuse to be lazy, then you might be privileging the hypothesis; it could be that it was only raised to the level of attention so that you can avoid work. Thus, the lazy choice really does get a big hit to its prior probability for being lazy.
But it’s still false that the other one is probably right. In general, if a human is choosing between two theories, they’re both probably insanely wrong. For rationalists, you can charitably drop “insanely” from that description.
Your first paragraph is a good analysis (enough to merit an upvote of the comment as a whole). Your second seems redundant; I don’t think anyone would interpret the quoted phrase of non-technical English to mean that you should actually raise your estimate of the theory that doesn’t permit laziness relative to other theories not under consideration, and if you have two theories both of which are equally wrong, it doesn’t matter much what you do to differentiate them.