OK hi, time for another Pet Peeves With Adam segment: Occams Razor is incredibly often misunderstood and misused. It is usually quoted as thus: The simplest answer is generally the right one. A lot of folks tend to think of this incorrectly, though. Occams Razor does NOT necessarily suggest that simpler answers are always better! This has led to people using Occams Razor to justify seemingly simple explanations to problems, while actually bastardizing the sentiment of the phrase! What Occams Razor is really about is limiting focus while at the same time FULLY EXPLAINING the problem. The most important part of the razor is in limiting extraneous information, not necessarily in direct simplicity. In that way, the following construction of the Razor might be better: When you have two competing theories that make exactly the same predictions, the simpler one is the better. Even this is slightly confusing, though, because in this guise, simpler means using fewer assumptions, and it also assumes that the theories in question are already full explanations of a hypothesis. In non-scientific use, the following is much more helpful and logically correct in everyday life: Entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily. This is the original construction by Occam. This makes it clearer that one should keep things simple, but only as simple as is needed to COMPLETELY describe the application of the problem. The original quote is an additive approach, dont make things MORE complex if you dont have to in order to fully describe something. Feel free to disagree if you think I am off my rocker!
Posted on: Mon, 17 Feb 2014 19:17:33 +0000
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