Ha! An alternate view of Occam's Razor

[Why Syzygy]

http://halfpasthuman.com/horrors.html

Occam's Razor is lizard shit, and other horrors for the inner reptile...

with respect, let us begin...

please note that if your mind instantly reacts to the title with derision and repulsion which you will be able to recognize from the visceral emotional response, then it, that is to say, YOUR mind, is likely responding from that the 'scientists' call the 'R-complex'. Around the wujo, it is known as the 'reptilian mind', or 'your inner reptile'.

(...)

Occam's razor, from Wikipedia, is defined as going toward the 'simple', with such expressions of it as 'the simple answer is the true answer'. Also note all the 'odorous order' language used in the Wikipedia definition such as 'laws' and other statements of authority embedded in what you are reading which are actually instructions for your mind about the text as it reads it. Clear as monkey butts on moonless midnight?

So the point of this missive is that Occam's razor is bogus and can easily be demonstrated by merely examining the context of universe and the language of expressions of Occam's razor. First note that universe is ANYTHING other than simple. In fact, complexity rules. Universe, if it ever was simple, instantly headed in the direction of the nearby hills of Complexity at breakneck speed and never looked back.

(...)

[xchrom]

1. that's funny. nt

[RandomThoughts]

2. If you believe what can be understood by many people is important.

Then the simple becomes more valued.


And complexity is the brother of secrecy, although some things are complex, many people use complexity to hide some simple idea, like what they are doing would be thought wrong.


If step 1 to step 2, would obviously be a bad thing for many people, there are those that add 100 steps in between so people don't see how they get to the step two desired by those adding the steps.

A person having a billion dollars is wrong,

it simply is by any argument of just compensation for any length of work or action,

the other side of the discussion says, "so what, if you can take it you can have it"



That is really the discussion there. Should things being fair somehow be attached to what a person has done or does, how they do it, and what they have, or just be might makes right and what you can take you can have.

might sound simple, but that is the entire discussion on that point.

So add a few hundred steps and paths to explain why someone has a billion dollars, and suddenly that simple truth of the core discussion becomes opaque.


And if you make the argument that they help more people by being better able to determine how it is spent, you can't make that argument, I am due beer and travel money.

[SheilaT]

3. I thought Occam's Razor says

that all other things being equal, the simplest explanation is generally the best one.

So I can't quite figure out what you are getting at.

[The Traveler]

I always thought

that Occam's Razor merely held that the explanation that incorporated the fewest number of external assumptions was most likely to be true. It's a rule of thumb sort of thing, a guideline for investigating.

Trav

[Why Syzygy]

4. Did you read the page

linked here? He is saying there ain't no such thing as a *simple* explanation.

[damntexdem]

7. If you read the page, you realize he doesn't know what he's talking about.

Explanations can be as simple or complex as needed -- to be explanations. Even the most complex theories need simpler explanations if many are to understand something about them. Moreover, the issue is not "simple," rather "simpler," or "simplest compatible with the facts as known."

[SheilaT]

15. When my son was taking geometry,

there was a homework assignment to solve some problem in the fewest possible steps. Next day, the teacher said the fewest possible was seven, and my son said, no, four. When he showed her his proof, she was quite amazed, because she'd never figured out there was a simpler proof to that problem.

Off topic, but I wanted to share the story anyway.

[Confusious]

17. Basically, Occam's Razor still holds

Out of two incredibly complex answers, the simplest one is most likely to be true.

It's more of a rule of thumb, that is, it's only mostly true.

[The Magistrate]

5. It Might Help, Sir, If He Actually Engaged Occam's Razor....

"One should not increase, beyond what is necessary, the number of entities required to explain anything."

[Orsino]

12. But...but...the author even went to *Wikipedia*, and everything.

It doesn't sound as though the author is engaging with reality, either. That's some incoherent bullshit, there.

[damntexdem]

6. This is b.s. Occam's Razor is important to science and to thought.

In effect, it today says to go to the simplest account that is compatible with the facts as known. In a complex world, such accounts tend to be very complex, but should be no more complex than necessary. Moreover, assuming the simplest account compatible with known facts has led science repeatedly to both learn new facts and to debunk old ones, leading to the need for more-complex theories to account for them. Thus, the assumption of a uniform past in geology led to the accumulation of sufficient geologic knowledge that the simplest theory consonant with those facts meant the rejection of uniformity -- recognition that the past of the earth was very, very different from today's earth.

[Odin2005]

8. This idiot does not understand what Occam's Razor means.

Occam's Razor means not to add unnecessary assumptions to one's hypotheses and models.

[Igel]

11. Which is why people dislike it.

Moreover, it doesn't claim that the simplest explanation concordant with all and only the data is correct. It merely says that's the one we assume is correct; the others are superfluous.

[emulatorloo]

9. Here's the Judge Judy version: "If it doesn't make sense, it probably isn't true"

- Take birtherism. Not true.
- Take moon landings were fake. Not true
- Take anything a republican claims to be true. Doesnt make sense, isn't true.

[laconicsax]

10. Well "clif" there sure dispatched that straw man!

:eyes:

[jobendorfer]

13. another way to look at Occam's Razor

There's some phenomena that you're trying to understand.
There is a set of possible explanations for that phenomena.
Occam's Razor says, the simplest explanation is *most likely* the correct one.
As a practical matter, the simpler explanations are the easiest to test, given that scientists have finite time and certainly VERY finite budgets.
So that's what you start with.
It's a principle for organizing, or ordering, how you test models/explanations.

At the end of the day ( or year or decade ), the (simplest) model that is a) logically consistent and b) accords with experiment, wins. Complex or not. Which is why Quantum Mechanics and Relativity replaced Newtonian Mechanics. QM & Relativity are more complicated than Newtonian Mechanics, but
they yield correct answers in situations where Newtonian Mechanics does not.

Oh, and if your model predicts something new, and that prediction is supported by experiment, then you win a donut. Or maybe a Nobel Prize.

Here endeth the discourse on "How Scientists Do Management." :-)

J.

[DetlefK]

14. What caused this car accident? A human, a banana peel or a bag of rice that rolled over in China?

[jobendorfer]

16. all three --

-- before the probability wave collapsed.

-- Ooops. Wrong domain. Sorry. Couldn't resist. :-)

(Well said, BTW).

J.

[trotsky]

18. Ha!

That was incredibly lame. Dunning-Kruger proven once again.

[Why Syzygy]

19. Hey!

I took everyone off ignore; and it's so fun to see all the old formerly familiar faces!

Clif High is a Genius.

[laconicsax]

20. When you say genius, you mean that ironically, right?

:shrug:

[Why Syzygy]

21. Of course not.

If you're not familiar with his work, I would say, I'm in a better position to make that claim.

[laconicsax]

22. Well, considering how moronic the piece you posted is, I'll have to disagree with you.

Hint: It's a poorly written beat down on a straw man.