How to be confused by fiction?

Re. the story of the hot/cool plate that was then rotated (www.greaterwrong.com/posts/fysgqk4CjAwhBgNYT/fake-explanations)

The fix is not to end your faith in your understanding of sequences of events forever… but at least you must be able to come up with out-of-box explanations for strange happenings, up to and including that everything you experienced was a hallucination – actually, it's not about creativity itself (easy), but the habit to activate your creativity as soon as you sense that you can find something that fits reality better than the fait accompli, even if you have to reach far into the improbable. Some disinclination to take what you seem to have observed as something that did happen.

Using a different example, if you never suspected that your science teacher moonlights as a magician, you'd naturally assign a low probability to the hypothesis that she uses sleight of hand to fool you about something. That's fine. The problem is when you don't even think of this hypothesis. You must spot at least the fact that sleight of hand would be one of the easiest ways to cause your current observations, when otherwise your physics model struggles to explain it at anywhere near gears-level.

Inspired by Cicero's cui bono, one way to do it: Zoom out, assume someone meant for you to see this odd result, ask what you would have done to make it happen.

Or: Posed with the challenge to explain the chilly metal plate, ask what you would have done if you right now decided to go into another room with another metal plate and another fire to reproduce the result. Looks like a variant of my trick to find out how I messed up in a relationship: asking "what would I have done different if I re-started the day?" (Cognitive reframings).

Or it's a variant of considering the counterfactual (Reversal test), although here, I see no "traditional" counterfactual – the observation must be taken as given, it makes little sense to consider "what if I had seen a different observation?" (although that might be useful for bug-checking your proposed explanation), but instead you consider the alternative world one where a truth-fairy tells you that some of the facts in your hand are not facts (you've been fed a lie or accidental lie, or someone misdirected your attention or omitted something, or you've misinterpreted something). Having been told this by the fairy, what would be your first thought?

Another way to frame this question: How to feel shocked enough? Practice that to stop the habit of accepting the fait accompli.

What links here

• *Fake Explanations