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ChristianKl comments on Open thread, Sep. 12 - Sep. 18, 2016 - Less Wrong
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If much effort should be invested in the initial search for hypotheses/explanations, before they are weighed against each other, then how come there are apparently so few cases where more than two major hypotheses are proposed?
I mean, I don't know much about the history of physics, but I do remember being surprised by the (relatively) many models of the Structure of the Atom we heard about in chronological order. And there used to be lots more Trees of Life, back in the XIXth century. But I cannot, on the fly, think of crazy-but-who-knows things of today (well, except for the Search for Ancestors of Angiosperms, it just goes on).
If we look at the future of humanity there might be "The Long Now", "The Age of Em", "AGI goes FOOM" and a bunch of other hypothesis.
More generally Anglo-culture prefer Democrats against Republicans and Whigs and Tories. As such it often tries to put a conflict as a competition of two alternatives. A lot of the mechanism of science like the students t.test also is build on the foundation that you make decisions between two alternatives. Continental philosophy doesn't tend to do that to the same extend but continental philosophy also doesn't have much influence on the natural sciences.