Rant: I'm tired of hearing about Occam's razor

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Occam's razor - Encyclopedia Britannica

As a problem-solving GUIDELINE, there is nothing wrong with it. Like many phrases, the original meaning has expanded. It's oft colloquial meaning is a weaponized RULE meaning the only possible explanation is the obvious. Of course, the problems with this meaning is that the obvious explanation is not always the truth and what is obvious to one person is not obvious to another person. What is obvious to NT's generally is not obvious to autistics and vice versa. 10 or 20 years ago you rarely heard this phrase used on or offline. The phrase has become a common method to win debating points, to shut conversations down. It has become a common way to say those who disagree with the "obvious" explanation at best thinks too much and is probably a conspiracy theorist.

I would never use Occam's Razor to shut down a debate, just to point out that the simpler explanation has the merits of being simpler. I also haven't seen it used like this very often but perhaps that's because I haven't been arguing enough on the internet.

I'm all for complex explanations if they explain things better than simpler explanations. The problem with a lot of complex explanations is they are usually (not always) put together by someone who hasn't thought through all the angles. Simple explanations usually have a lot more wiggle room than complex ones.

I really don't think it does shut down a debate. If anything I take the person, and his/her/their argument less seriously. Its really not much more than a parlor trick. If an argument has merit, there's no need to resort to a cop out.

The definitions I try to follow are: (1) of two competing theories, the simpler explanation of an entity is to be preferred; and (2) entities are not to be multiplied beyond necessity.

Taken together, it means to me that once you have determined the natural causes of an event, there is no need to seek out supernatural causes.

Lunar Phases? Orbital geometry.

Diversity of Species? Evolutionary processes.

Crop Circles? Human planning, preparation and effort.

Here's another one for you:

"Any apparently supernatural event is indistinguishable from a sufficiently well-rigged hoax."

Would you consider Occam's Razor a Heuristic?

Yes. It would be like " a rule of thumb". Hurestic.

If you are gonna delve into the paranormal and engage in discussion you just have to put up with folks who will resist, and resist with using occams razor, because its a legit argument in situations in which no one knows the answer, neither of you knows, so the person with the simpler explanation has the high ground.

For example.

A buddy of mine had a favorite comedy movie starring Gene Wilder has a nebbish rabbi in the Nineteenth century who finds himself traveling to California and falling with gentile cowboys and other old west characters.

In one of the final scenes his prospector friend says to him (now that they struck it rich with gold or something) "I am going to celeberate by going into town, I am gonna get drunk, and then Im gonna get drunk AGAIN, and l.."

Or that was what he said when my buddy and I saw it on TV.

He told me that when he saw it in a theater the guy said "Im gonna get drunk, and then Im gonna get laid, and then...".

My friend asserted that "they must have filmed the scene twice- and made two different versions", and we figured that that Hollywood probably just does that- makes different cuts of the same movie (One for grownups in the theater, and another kid safe version for TV).

This was back in the Eighties.

Today in the 2010s with the internet and UTube there is now an industry vloggers who promote "the Mandela Effect"- which is the theory that we are all living in somekind of shifted time line of history.

Nowadays folks would see the above descrepency in movie dialogue as "evidence" of the Mandela Effect.
These vloggers use things like the above movie decrepency as "evidence" of the Mandela Effect.

So here are the two possible explanation for the descpency in the movie dialogue:

A. Because they are messing with matter at the new collider at Cern our whole Universe is now jumping the rail road track of time itself, and we now live a parallel universe in which your fav movie exists in a different form how it existed in the old parallel universe.

B. Hollywood just does that. Routinely films different versions of the same scenes in moves to make different cuts of the same movie for different markets.


A is obviously a more complex explanation. B is the simpler one. A MIGHT be right. But I would bet on B because it survives Occam's razor cut.

The simplest, most obvious explanation is often not the most "truthful" presentation, nor the "best" explanation, nor the most "precise" explanation.

A stricter notion of the Razor would require the simpler framework to maintain a similar (or greater) predictive power over involved phenomena as the more complex framework being denied. Otherwise we could use it to deny relativity and quantum mechanics in favor of Newtonian physics on the basis that it's just a simpler idea. That side of the Razor is almost never mentioned due to the uses many people put it to.

There's also Chatton's anti-razor: "Whenever an affirmative proposition is apt to be verified for actually existing things, if two things, howsoever they are present according to arrangement and duration, cannot suffice for the verification of the proposition while another thing is lacking, then one must posit that other thing."

"once you have determined the natural causes of an event, there is no need to seek out supernatural causes."
This is an example of how Occam's Razor can be twisted up into a perverse form. The causes of natural phenomena cannot be "determined." A given framework for them can only be falsified, never affirmed. That's basic science. In lieu of affirmed determination there are, however, accepted frameworks. To posit as the only alternative to an accepted framework the action of the supernatural is an example of a strawman fallacy.

A lot of people seem to use the Razor just to shut down others and, really, to allow themselves to keep from even pondering the possibility of other ideas. You see it a lot from closed-minded know-it-alls who are very attached to the perception of control that their beliefs about the world seem to afford them. They'll also bring to bear all sorts of other faulty reasoning, like "proof" by example and witty and/or sarcastic aphorisms that, while being devoid of any real conceptual content, act to make the other person feel foolish, getting them to back down and prevent any real debate from occurring. But they're often just desperately trying to protect themselves, and getting you to comply with their truth helps them maintain that defense.

The best thing you can do with those people is to learn to recognize them for what they are and ignore them. They're defensive people often compensating for something else that they would deny if challenged about it, which adds to the complication of noticing them as such. Especially when they bring all sorts of witticisms to bear.

Maybe, I don't know. Just how I see it at the moment.

Occams razor is not "simplest explanation is always right",i's "the simplest theory that explains all of the facts is the most likely".. Newtonian physics is simpler than quantum mechanics and relativity. But we now know things that they didn't know in Newton's time that Newton's theory doesn't explain. So quantum mechanics is now "the simpliest thing that explains all of the facts" since the facts now go beyond Newton but are contained within QM.

OMG!
You can think rationally when you want to!




There are lots of examples of people over-simplifying a complex consideration...
Man-mad climate change is a perfect example of this...
It is *not* as simple as many people would like it to be...<duck> <quack>

I actually haven't been in a debate in a while where it got invoked.

If you really want to be a smartarse though - just tell em 'God did it' - simplest explanation for anything anywhere.

Occam's Razor is clearly a tool and like any other tool, garbage in garbage out.

I've seen that done. Kind of falls flat when you try to defend the idea that somehting that could meaningfully be called a "God" could also be described as "simple".

Agreed. "God did it" implies that we have an advanced-thinking entity (God) responsible for some cause.
That's against the razor, because "God" is not simple.

People don't like the razor simply because they think it would be more fun to believe in some weird fairy tales. I don't buy into that, and that's why I use the razor - even to shut down a ridiculous debate.

You could sub in 'It happened for no reason'.

Main point - if someone uses Occam's Razor incorrectly it just becomes a tool for defending laziness, lack of research (and/or interest), and ends up getting taken hostage by pseudointellectuals. A lot more people want to look learned/sophisticated these days than are willing to actually do the work it takes to be that.

Saying "god did it" is not an explanation. It is the absence of an explanation.

I'm sure you can find someone around here who takes that proposition seriously. I'm not the right guy to defend it though.