They don’t “wake up completely” and realize that, in the absence of evidence, the whole thing has a prior probability too low to deserve specific attention.
“a prior probability too low to deserve specific attention” is an advanced argument, and it is not a generally accepted or well-known principle of reasoning, and it is my impression that humans rarely use it.
As an explicit principle, yes, it is rarely known.
As an informal principle, most people don’t spend a lot of time wondering, after they fully wake up, whether the pink elephant might really be hidden inside their pillow.
most people don’t spend a lot of time wondering, after they fully wake up, whether the pink elephant might really be hidden inside their pillow.
Yes, most people have a “that’s clearly ridiculous” filter that emulates the work that a complexity prior should do. It seems to work much like the way modern antivirus works—there’s a blacklist of “ridiculous” ideas that you reject out of hand, and popular culture acts like the “update virus database” function. Simple hypotheses like evolution often end up on this blacklist, and horrifically complex ones like the Abrahamic God often end up off it.
“a prior probability too low to deserve specific attention” is an advanced argument, and it is not a generally accepted or well-known principle of reasoning, and it is my impression that humans rarely use it.
As an explicit principle, yes, it is rarely known.
As an informal principle, most people don’t spend a lot of time wondering, after they fully wake up, whether the pink elephant might really be hidden inside their pillow.
Yes, most people have a “that’s clearly ridiculous” filter that emulates the work that a complexity prior should do. It seems to work much like the way modern antivirus works—there’s a blacklist of “ridiculous” ideas that you reject out of hand, and popular culture acts like the “update virus database” function. Simple hypotheses like evolution often end up on this blacklist, and horrifically complex ones like the Abrahamic God often end up off it.
Related concepts: Absurdity heuristic, Antiprediction.