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I think that Occam's razor says, that if we have several theories that describe reality with the same accuracy, we should chose the most succint (least redundan
by RivieraKid 14y ago
I think that Occam's razor says, that if we have several theories that describe reality with the same accuracy, we should chose the most succint (least redundant).
- pjscott 14y agoThat's a good way to put it. If you want to be mathematically rigorous about it, you could phrase it as a statement about probabilities: for any A and B, P(A and B) <= P(A).
- d0mine 14y agoBeing simple could more useful than being succinct e.g.: aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa is simpler than d9$lLsi because the first is just 45a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolmogorov_complexity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolmogorov_complexity
- RivieraKid 14y agoThe first one is more succint in a sense, because normally it wouldn't be represented in this literal, long form.
- scott_s 14y agoI don't think of it in terms of redundancy, but of introduced entities. That is, if two theories have equal explanatory power, but one theory requires ten new concepts, but the other one requires one new concept, prefer the latter. This interpretation is, I think, the spirit of what he intended: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occams_razor#Ockham http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occams_razor#Ockham