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You are fundamentally misunderstanding Occam's Razor. It is not a law - Occam's Razor is a preference for how to view the world, not a law that was violated. Y
by joe_the_user 5y ago
You are fundamentally misunderstanding Occam's Razor. It is not a law - Occam's Razor is a preference for how to view the world, not a law that was violated.
Yes, Occam's Razor isn't a law but a method of understanding reality. My point is that if you throw out Occam's Razor in total, not in one or another situations, you're left with nothing to understand the world with.
The "God wants it that ways" and "because it's simulation" can be substituted for any proposition at all under any circumstances and there's not counter argument to such substitutions. This approach is also "the paranoid worldview" - "because they want to think that" also has this "insert everywhere" quality.
And you're link describing the original ideas of William of Occam doesn't what you'd imagine. "Occam's Razor" is broad approach that's evolved over time and just takes that label for convennience. Virtually no one is evoking the authority of William of Occam or claiming to follow his Nominalism or whatever. The generally means that adding unneeded hypotheses should generally be avoided. If you can never follow that guide, you're in trouble.
- ericb 5y agoThe reason "magicians" succeed is because Occam's razor is a heuristic that we rely on intuitively. When the real explanation is super-complex, like "this magician spent 8 hours a day for months learning to hold a hidden card in an invisible way, followed by a year of engineering an under-the-stage lift hidden by mirrors, the reality isn't "disproved" by Occam's razor. Same thing if someone engineers a super complicated method to murder someone while appearing to physically be at a different place. It isn't the simplest explanation, but it can still be correct!
- joe_the_user 5y agoThe reason "magicians" succeed is because Occam's razor is a heuristic that we rely on intuitively. When the real explanation is super-complex, like "this magician spent 8 hours a day for months learning to hold a hidden card in an invisible way, followed by a year of engineering an under-the-stage lift hidden by mirrors, the reality isn't "disproved" by Occam's razor. Sure. But if the entirety of reality is created by magicians, then one's concept of reality collapses. The "simulation" view point is indeed pretty much the idea that magicians control everything. If you read the argument above, my point isn't that Occam's Razor is always correct but if you posit a world where it is generally/always incorrect, your ability to coherently understand reality collapses.
- IncRnd 5y ago> The generally means that adding unneeded hypotheses should generally be avoided. This is the logical fallacy with what you wrote. You don't know what is needed or unneeded.
- joe_the_user 5y agoNone of my arguments here have been classical syllogisms and so none of my arguments can be "logical fallacies". Your not responding to the meaning of my informal statements in a rather transparently bad faith manner.
- IncRnd 5y agoPlease stop trying to win a debate. You haven't actually addressed what I or anyone else wrote. If you want people to discuss with you, understand they expect you to do the same. A logical fallacy is an error in reasoning that is based on poor or faulty logic.
- joe_the_user 5y agoPlease stop trying to win a debate. Lol, it seems clear you are the one setting up a debate and attempting to win it. I actually am working on the implications of the "simulation" argument. All of my positions are based "plausible reasoning" with similarities to formal logic being only incidental.