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By following the path of expedience, we can avoid the risk of suffering entailed by the path of evidence. But the path of expedience poses two subtle dangers.
On one hand, we might start to lose our handle on epistemology. That is to say, once we start making decisions based on considerations other than evidence, we risk forgetting how important evidence is. And if that happens, we are more likely to accept other hypotheses which appear to be false. In short, we can easily become delusional.
Please note that this is not a "slippery slope" fallacy. It is in fact a very slippery slope.
On the other hand, if we maintain our handle on epistemology, we can become quite unhappy with ourselves. Nobody wants to look in the mirror and see a person who accepts hypotheses which appear to be false.
So we may find ourselves subtly driven by desires to tell ourselves "little white lies" which, if they were true, would enhance the credibility of our beliefs.
These lies can be remarkably effective, because even though we create them ourselves, we can also fool ourselves into believing them. In the long run, they are neither little (inconsequential), nor white (obvious). On the contrary, these lies are bigger and blacker than we would like to admit. And they come in two varieties.
On one hand, we can inadvertently fabricate bogus evidence for H2, thus adding to V2.
On the other, we can accidentally dismiss credible evidence for H1, thus subtracting from V1.
If we tell ourselves enough of these lies, we can create the false but satisfying appearance that V2 > V1.
This appearance is satisfying because it implies that R2 > R1 doesn't matter, since we would have accepted H2 anyway, simply because V2 > V1.
And if we believe enough of these lies, we can feel better about ourselves when we look in the mirror.
But in order to do this, we must convince ourselves that we know things we don't know, and that we don't know things we do know. In short, we must become delusional.
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