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cousin_it comments on Rationality quotes January 2012 - Less Wrong
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Eliezer Yudkowsky
(Some discussions here, such as those involving such numbers as 3^^^3, give me the same feeling.)
I don't understand that quote. A good Bayesian should still pick the aposteriori most probable explanation for an improbable event, even if that explanation has very low prior probability before the event.
I suspect the point is that it's not worthwhile to look for potential explanations for improbable events until they actually happen.
I think it's more than that - he's saying that if you have a plausible explanation for an event, the event itself is plausible, explanations being models of the world. It's a warning against setting up excuses for why your model fails to predict the future in advance - you shouldn't expect your model to fail, so when it does you don't say, "Oh, here's how this extremely surprising event fits my model anyway." Instead, you say "damn, looks like I was wrong."
I don't, however, think it's meant to be a warning against contrived thought experiments.