Use cross-validation to train after model selection I have been recently reading about model selection algorithms (for example to decide which value of the regularisation parameter or what size of a neural network to use, broadly hyper-parameters). This is done by dividing the examples into three sets (training 60%, cross-validation 20%, test 20%) and training is done on the data with the first set for all parameters, and then choose the best parameter based on the result in the cross-validation and finally estimate the performance using the test set.

I understand the need for a different data-set compared to training and test for select the model, however, once the model is selected, why not using the cross-validation examples to improve the hypothesis before estimating the performance?

The only reason I could see is that this could cause the hypothesis to worsen and we wouldn't be able to detect it, but, is it really possible that by adding much more examples (60% -> 80%) the hypothesis gets worse?
You are quite correct. If you have properly followed the Cross Validation procedure and selected the best model indeed, then you can use the CV set as the training set for the final model. And no it will not cause your hypothesis to worsen (for that set maybe, but not for new examples) if you have selected the model correctly. In-fact you may use the entire 100% of the data-set.

Justin Johnson a TA at Stanford University answered a similar type of question on training CNN's using 100% of the data-set. He said that if you had enough computational resources and want to squeeze that extra 1% or 2% accuracy from your model you can use the entire data-set after model selection.

NOTE: As @NeilSlater pointed out, if you need the model for reporting purposes you should only use 80% of the data-set, otherwise you'll lose your only source for unbiased model verification. But if you are looking to deploy the model on field you can use 100% of the data-set.