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> It's hard to communicate the "essential meaning" of Occam's Razor in simple language It's really not. Here's a few that don't make the same mistake. - Plura
by abritinthebay 10y ago
> It's hard to communicate the "essential meaning" of Occam's Razor in simple language
It's really not. Here's a few that don't make the same mistake.
- Plurality must never be posited without necessity.
- Among competing hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected.
- Entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity.
- Whenever possible, substitute constructions out of known entities for inferences to unknown entities.
- favor hypotheses that make the fewest unwarranted assumptions about the data from which they are derived.
All of these are more correct and communicate the principles better than the "simplest" formulation which is just flat-out wrong without extremely heavy clarification of what "simplest" means (at which point you may as well use one of the above).
- CurtMonash 10y agoSee my other comment.
- sideshowb 10y agoQuantum many worlds violates most if not all of those everyday language formulations. Doesn't violate the minimum message length one, though. I've not heard that one before & I like it.
- andybak 10y agoI can't find the source of the quote now but a famous physicist once critiqued The Many Worlds interpretation along the lines of "It might be light on assumptions but it's very heavy on universes"
- abritinthebay 10y ago> Quantum many worlds violates most if not all of those everyday language formulations. This is a common objection to which supporters would say means you're not reviewing the data in enough depth. It's a fair argument tho. Given Occam is supposed to only be a guideline and not some kind of universal law it wouldn't actually matter if QMW did violate it though (even though that's debatable anyhow).
- Chris2048 10y ago> without extremely heavy clarification of what "simplest" means kolmogorov complexity? But then there is no universal measure, so it's relative.
- abritinthebay 10y agoYou could formulate a version that used kolmogorov complexity, that's perfectly valid. It would be a narrower, less generally applicable, version... but a completely valid formulation.