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The narrative fallacy is a great counterpoint to the popular invocation of Occam’s Razor. The next time I hear someone choose to believe something because it’s
by taejavu 6y ago
The narrative fallacy is a great counterpoint to the popular invocation of Occam’s Razor. The next time I hear someone choose to believe something because it’s the simpler story, I’ll be bringing this up.
- teawrecks 6y agoIn other words, Occam's Razor dictates that correlation doesn't imply causation?
- logicprog 6y agoI always thought the proper application of Occam's Razor wasn't "the simpler the proposed explanation is, the truer it is likely to be," since this has shown to be false in literally every scientific and philosophical investigation that we've ever done that has arrived at anything close to verifiable truth, but was more "the fewer assumptions an explanation has, or the fewer things in our already functional understanding of the world an explanation requires us to throw out, the truer it is likely to be." This accounts for our science and philosophy being correct but also indicates that, for instance, if an explanation posits an entirely new non-physical dimension or an entirely new system of physics, without good evidence for it over the others (and this is important: the two explanations we are comparing with Occam's Razor need to be explaining the same data - have the same explanatory power - otherwise there should be an obvious way to falsify/confirm one or the other) then its less likely to be true. Or, in short: "this explanation requires me to throw out everything else I think I know, whereas this other explanation explains the same data but requires me to discard less, so it is probably a better explanation."
- taejavu 6y agoI’m not talking about the proper application, I mean only the popular usage.
- logicprog 6y agoI understood that - I was just speculating on what the correct usage of it is, as opposed to the popular usage. I'm not actually sure what the proper application is and what its relationship to the popular usage was. Thought I could add to the discussion with that. (:
- taejavu 6y agoAh, it appears to me that you indeed have a good understanding of those things and how they relate.
- goto11 6y agoOccams Razor is not about the likelihood of a theory being true. It says that out of two theories which both explain observations you should chose the simpler. It is not a statement about the world, it is a principle of economy of thought. According to the logical positivist, two theories which explain the same outcome are equally true. Believing that one theory could be "more true" despite both predicting the same outcome is basically religion, since you are believing in some metaphysical "objective truth" beyond observation.
- seanwilson 6y agoFor the proper use of Occam’s Razor, is this accurate? "If you have two competing hypotheses that both have similar predictive power, it's better to test the one that relies on the simplest to test assumptions".
- taejavu 6y agoI doubt it. Edit: thinking about this more, possibly? Although, to me, Occam’s Razor seems like a strategy for making the best use of one’s time, not as a direct method of finding truth.