The question "which options are long-term rational answers?" corresponds immediately to the hypothesis "among the options are some long-term rational answers" and can be investigated in the same way.

Incorrect. Prove that one option is a long-term rational answer and you have proved the hypothesis "among the options are some long-term rational answers". That is nowhere near completing answering the question "which options are long-term rational answers"

My hypothesis was much, much more limited than "among the options are some long-term rational answers". It specified which of the options was a long-term rational answer. It further specified that all of the other options were not long-term rational answers. It is much, much easier to disprove my hypothesis than the broader hypothesis "among the options are some long-term rational answers" which gives it correspondingly more power.

If you really think that people here need to be educated as to what a hypothesis is, then a) it'd be better to link to a wikipedia definition and b) why are you bothering to post here?

Fully grokking Eliezer's post that I linked would have given you all of the above reply. The wikipedia definition is less clear than Eliezer's post. I post here because this community is more than capable of helping/forcing me to clarify my logic and rationality.