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TheOtherDave comments on This post is for sacrificing my credibility! - Less Wrong Discussion
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It may be relevant that Will has talked elsewhere about certain important physical phenomena being evasive, in the sense that their likelihood of occurring is significantly inversely proportional to whether someone is trying to prove or demonstrate them.
When I value my interactions with an evasive phenomenon (the beliefs of shy people, the social rules of Guess cultures, etc.), one consequence is often that I can't actually talk about my real reasons for things; everything has to be indirect and roundabout and sometimes actively deceptive.
I am generally happier when I don't value my interactions with evasive phenomena, but that's not always an option.
Upvoted for giving two examples of real evasive phenomena. I'd previously only encountered that idea in anti-epistemological contexts, wherein "the universe evades attempts to seek the truth about X" was always clearly a desperate after-the-fact attempt to justify "so despite attempts to seek the truth about X which keep appearing to contradict my claims, you should still believe my claims instead".
But I suppose it's just common sense that you can't properly investigate much psychology or sociology unless you avoid letting the subjects understand that they're being investigated. That's a huge difference from e.g. evasive cosmologies, in which investigating a subject without alerting Him is often presumed impossible.
Well, evasive physical law follows from certain theologies just as readily as evasive cultural norms or relationship rules follow from certain sociologies and psychologies; it needn't be post-hoc reasoning. Of course, whether those theologies, or any theologies, have a referent in the first place is a different question.
Evasive physical law follows naturally from some theologies, it's merely been a post-hoc rationalization for the theologies that I've seen people trying to spread. For instance, either of "We have an ethical theory under which God needs to hide" and "We claim to have records of many instances in which God avoided hiding" could be a weak but positive argument by itself, but the (common) combination is actually negative evidence.