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Occam's razor can be used to rule out "more complicated" explanations for the same evidence. The problem is that I haven't seen any explanation for how else th
by shkkmo 6y ago
Occam's razor can be used to rule out "more complicated" explanations for the same evidence.
The problem is that I haven't seen any explanation for how else the car got up to that speed. Without a actual competing explanation, you can't use occam's razor at to rule out unlikely explanations.
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- YeGoblynQueenne 6y agoThere is a very simple explanation: the car crashed because of the actions of the two people we know were in the car. Any explanation that requires a third person is more complex than that. What where the actions of the two people in the car that caused the crash? That we can't know yet because we don't have enough information. So in that case, Billy Occam would say "sit tight and wait until you know more".
- shkkmo 6y ago"they did something and it caused them to crash" isn't really an explanation...so don't go ruling out other valid explanations as "too complicated" till you have enough information to create a proper alternative. Otherwise you are mis-applying occam's razor. Occam's razor isn't a rule of logic, it is a heuristic to help you navigate complicated epistemic situations.
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- YeGoblynQueenne 6y agoI think what you're saying is that if you don't have a good explanation, then everything goes, you're free to imagine anything you want. Until "you have enough information to create a propper alternative" you can "multiply entities" to your heart's content- and make any kind of assumption you like. Is that what you mean?
- tyingq 6y agoYeah, sure. He means that "3rd person fled the scene" is on par with "Space Aliens".
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- shkkmo 6y agoIn saying that you are using Occam's Razor which is soley intended for distinguish two theories of identical explanatory value. There are plenty of other epistemic tools to evaluate the likihood of various incomplete explanations with different levels of explanatory power. Edit: Occam's Razor is like a tie breaker after you have brought out all your other epistemic tools and failed to break the tie. You are nowhere near that point.
- YeGoblynQueenne 6y ago>> In saying that you are using Occam's Razor which is soley intended for distinguish two theories of identical explanatory value. Is it? The Razor says "entities should not be multiplied without necessity" (see wikipedia). Assuming a third person is "multiplying entities without necessity". Any explanation that assumes a third person is "multiplying entities without necessity". So it should be cut by the Razor, meaning we don't need to consider it. It doesn't matter if there is no better explanation yet. Any explanation that doesn't assume a third person in the car will always be better than any explanation that assumes a third person in the car. So the Razor can indeed help us distinguish between likely explanations even when we haven't yet formulated those explanations. Also, I'm curious- do you really think that if we don't have a good explanation then we're free to imagine anything we want? That's an obvious error of reasoning that you would have tried to avoid if you were aware of it, yet it really seems to me that this is what you're doing. Would you like to go over that for a bit? Edit: I've edited this comment repeatedly to make it less contentious, like HN guidelines advice. I suggest we refrain from discussion of technicalities and avoid veering off into technical language, otherwise we'll just make this conversation even more tedious than it already is.