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MCalavera
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09 Jul 2013, 4:58 am

Remember, Occam's razor is really a matter of going with the simplest explanation that fits the evidence available to us. I think it's fair to say that Occam's razor must always be relied on in a debate about any topic. Even if Occam's razor leads to the wrong conclusion, we can't know that it's wrong. If we could know something was wrong, we would've reject it using Occam's razor. Therefore, there is never a reason not to employ it.

Agree or disagree?



TallyMan
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09 Jul 2013, 5:18 am

It depends how deeply the evidence is investigated. Superficially the wrong conclusion could be drawn by using Occam's Razor. For example a number of Christian fundies are satisfied with the simple statement that God created everything including all life and their evidence is their bible. Compare this against the highly complex scientific evidence that one needs to understand to see that the simple "God did it" assertion is incorrect. Most people don't have the necessary scientific background to evaluate the evidence and comprehend its depth and appreciate evolution is true.

Another way in which Occam's Razor could be incorrectly applied is when someone is deliberately trying to obfuscate the truth... e.g. steal someone's gun, shoot someone, return the gun to the original location before the theft has been noticed. Especially devious if the framed person is the registered owner of the gun and had motive for the offence and no alibi and would likely be the police's prime suspect. If the perp wore gloves and took care not to rub off the owners prints from the gun the Occam's Razor evidence against the innocent party would be damming.


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zer0netgain
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09 Jul 2013, 7:06 am

I despise simple logic rules.

They are intended to develop structured thinking, not to prove arguments.

The simplest explanation is often the correct one, is a general truth, but anyone with half a brain and knowledge of these rules will exploit them to conceal the truth. All you need is a simpler explanation for a situation and offer that as a distraction from the evidence of what really happened.

An old British show (Star Cops) had this concept in its pilot episode. A detective constantly runs afoul of his superiors because he trusts his instincts to open investigations when the computer at HQ says the case doesn't merit further investigation based on the evidence offered on intake. In both cases portrayed in the pilot, the bad guys were concealing their crimes by making sure everything about the crime scene looked like an accident and that the death(s) didn't occur at a frequency that would run afoul of the odds of probability for an accident.

When you deal with the concept of "conspiracy," you need to ask two basic questions....(1) is the suspect(s) smart enough to pull it off and make it look like something else, and (2) does the suspect(s) have the resources to pull off something that elaborate? We can presume that the answer to, "Is it possible there is a conspiracy" is going to be "yes."

If the people you suspect have conspired to do something have the brains and resources to make it happen (even if it would be an enormous undertaking), you will only uncover the truth by digging for all the evidence you can find. During this time, many will claim foolish arguments like this to say you're wasting your time, but if there is a conspiracy, and it is well-planned, you will NEVER prove it easily.



MCalavera
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09 Jul 2013, 7:39 am

Both of your posts show a slight misunderstanding of what Occam's razor is. It's not just merely the simplest explanation ever. It's the simplest explanation that fits the evidence.

God's existence is not supported by Occam's razor because God himself is quite a complex being anyway. A simpler explanation would be a mindless entity that does things randomly for no purpose such as triggering infinite universes via singularities like the Big Bang which triggered the one we're in.

Given such a definition for Occam's razor, how can anyone rationally reject this tool?



ruveyn
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09 Jul 2013, 7:44 am

MCalavera wrote:
Remember, Occam's razor is really a matter of going with the simplest explanation that fits the evidence available to us. I think it's fair to say that Occam's razor must always be relied on in a debate about any topic. Even if Occam's razor leads to the wrong conclusion, we can't know that it's wrong. If we could know something was wrong, we would've reject it using Occam's razor. Therefore, there is never a reason not to employ it.

Agree or disagree?


Occam's Razor is a handy dandy rule of thumb, but it is NOT a fundamental logic principle, such as the Law of Non-Contradiction. Logic itself depends on disallowing contradictions. On the other hand it is possible to come up with a complicated but verified scientific hypothesis. Nature is under no obligation to make things easy for us.

ruveyn



Fnord
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09 Jul 2013, 7:47 am

zer0netgain wrote:
... When you deal with the concept of "conspiracy," you need to ask two basic questions....(1) is the suspect(s) smart enough to pull it off and make it look like something else, and (2) does the suspect(s) have the resources to pull off something that elaborate? We can presume that the answer to, "Is it possible there is a conspiracy" is going to be "yes."...

Then you begin to look at every accident in terms of a possible conspiracy, and soon nearly every social website contains toxic threads full of remote-piloted airliners, death rays from space, explosives that make no noise, and fires that only burn sideways.

In a case where 3% of the people at a reception die from botulin poisoning, do you look for a member of the serving staff who failed to wash his hands, or do you go after the wastrel son with a grudge who lives half a continent away, who can not account for every penny he spends, and much less for his whereabouts during the time in question?

The simplest explanation that fits the most data is usually the correct answer. Conspiracies are too complex and far-reaching.

Besides, "Star Cops" was a work of fiction, and basing proper investigative procedures on such a piece of fluff serves only to muck up the procedings with paranoiac speculations.



ruveyn
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09 Jul 2013, 7:51 am

Fnord wrote:

The simplest explanation that fits the most data is usually the correct answer. Conspiracies are too complex and far-reaching.

.


"Is usually" is quite correct. "Must necessarily" would not be correct.

ruveyn



MCalavera
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09 Jul 2013, 8:46 am

Occam's razor is not always right, but then again, we can never be sure 100% that anything is true. Doesn't mean we should neglect it at any time, though. It's always the rational tool to use no matter what.



TallyMan
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09 Jul 2013, 9:01 am

MCalavera wrote:
Occam's razor is not always right, but then again, we can never be sure 100% that anything is true. Doesn't mean we should neglect it at any time, though. It's always the rational tool to use no matter what.


Agreed it is a rational tool to use, but like all tools one must be aware of its limitations and when it may give an incorrect result. Deductions about reality using scientific methods to evaluate evidence are more likely to be correct when using Occam's Razor than deductions about human actions - humans can deliberately manufacture and obscure evidence whereas nature doesn't have any such agenda (as far as I'm aware).


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zer0netgain
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09 Jul 2013, 9:16 am

Fnord wrote:
Besides, "Star Cops" was a work of fiction, and basing proper investigative procedures on such a piece of fluff serves only to muck up the procedings with paranoiac speculations.


True, but my point was that it well-illustrated that if you decide if something is so by such sterile superficial standards (e.g., what is the most likely explanation = true), it's very easy for someone to exploit such reasoning to get away with anything. Just don't leave any obvious clues that point to something other than the simplest and most obvious explanation.



ruveyn
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09 Jul 2013, 9:30 am

TallyMan wrote:
MCalavera wrote:
Occam's razor is not always right, but then again, we can never be sure 100% that anything is true. Doesn't mean we should neglect it at any time, though. It's always the rational tool to use no matter what.


Agreed it is a rational tool to use, but like all tools one must be aware of its limitations and when it may give an incorrect result. Deductions about reality using scientific methods to evaluate evidence are more likely to be correct when using Occam's Razor than deductions about human actions - humans can deliberately manufacture and obscure evidence whereas nature doesn't have any such agenda (as far as I'm aware).


Those are inductions, not deductions. Deductive reasoning when applied to true premises will always give true conclusions. the trick is knowing when or if the premises are true.

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techstepgenr8tion
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09 Jul 2013, 9:44 am

TallyMan wrote:
It depends how deeply the evidence is investigated. Superficially the wrong conclusion could be drawn by using Occam's Razor. For example a number of Christian fundies are satisfied with the simple statement that God created everything including all life and their evidence is their bible. Compare this against the highly complex scientific evidence that one needs to understand to see that the simple "God did it" assertion is incorrect. Most people don't have the necessary scientific background to evaluate the evidence and comprehend its depth and appreciate evolution is true.

Another way in which Occam's Razor could be incorrectly applied is when someone is deliberately trying to obfuscate the truth... e.g. steal someone's gun, shoot someone, return the gun to the original location before the theft has been noticed. Especially devious if the framed person is the registered owner of the gun and had motive for the offence and no alibi and would likely be the police's prime suspect. If the perp wore gloves and took care not to rub off the owners prints from the gun the Occam's Razor evidence against the innocent party would be damming.

This.

Occam's Razor works but only effectively so long as evidence to the contrary isn't getting stockpiled under the rug. At that point Occam's Razor suggests that if there are exceptions then you have either the wrong conclusion or you're calling several dynamics one dynamic.

Part of the problem we epistemic problem we have in debate though runs everywhere from highly incomplete facts to accepting/rejecting facts on belief rather than research (and to some extent its always there no matter how much a person would like to do better simply because there's so much out there that we either can't research and verify or would need to spend decades of our lives to understand in full thoroughness - most people don't have that kind of time and to even do so just makes one a narrow field expert rather than an expert on the whole).



sonofghandi
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09 Jul 2013, 11:14 am

MCalavera wrote:
Both of your posts show a slight misunderstanding of what Occam's razor is. It's not just merely the simplest explanation ever. It's the simplest explanation that fits the evidence.
Given such a definition for Occam's razor, how can anyone rationally reject this tool?


I see Occam's razor as more of a starting point. The mistake most people make is that once they apply the concept based on the current evidence, they are unlikely to change their minds, no matter how much new evidence becomes available. Additionally, unless you know absolutely everything about a given subject, Occam's razor is of limited usefulness, especially when you consider that most people have a tendency to define and interpret evidence in different ways.

As ruveyn stated earlier, it is a handy rule of thumb. Using it as the be all and end all of forming opinions can be quite misleading.
Example: The sun rises in the east and sets in the west, therefor the sun revolves around the earth from east to west. We know now that this is not the case, but for centuries the majority of people believed the "simpler" explanation, despite much evidence to the contrary.

More examples where Occam's razor led to incorrect assumptions:
Significant portions of early 20th century psychology, most economic theories of the past (and likely many of the current economic models), huge swaths of both eastern and western medicine, crime causation and prevention, heat transfer (it used to be believed that heat was conducted via microscopic particles), the existence of the planet Vulcan, Martian canals, cold fusion, and tabula rasa, to name a few.


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techstepgenr8tion
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09 Jul 2013, 11:51 am

I probably could have even summed that up in a far more concise and breezy method. Occam's Razor, like any other logical filter or process, falls under the same inherent vulnerability of 'garbage in garbage out'.



Last edited by techstepgenr8tion on 09 Jul 2013, 11:53 am, edited 1 time in total.

MCalavera
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09 Jul 2013, 11:52 am

Occam's razor always adapts to new evidence. Herein lies the misunderstanding.

In the long past, Occam's razor stated that the Earth was flat. Today, it states the Earth is actually round.



techstepgenr8tion
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09 Jul 2013, 12:03 pm

That sounds like "Which error is superior in nobility - type I or type II?"

I don't think either is as that answer has a lot more to do with the topic and application.