Is Ockham's Razor Bullshit?

[SLD]

I hear this a lot, and frankly I’m getting tired of it. The simplest explanation is the correct one. Or words to that effect. Of course that’s not how Ockham put it, but he did say that pluralities should not be multiplied beyond necessity. Somehow it got morphed into our modern catchphrase. Regardless, I say it’s past time to call this whole point bullshit. I realize that this may be controversial here, but bear me out.

First, Ockham proposed this as a way to explain the miracle of the Eucharist. And the simplest explanation is that goddidit. Ergo there is a god. And he’s the Christian one and you better convert now. No wonder they made him a saint. Of course, the Eucharist is amongst the most bullshittiest thing in Christianity. But admittedly goddidit is the simplest explanation I can think of. Goddidit is the simplest explanation of everything, and if we stuck to old billie's maxim we’d still be in the dark ages.

The real explanations for modern science are not simple. The equations of General Relativity, i.e. the solutions to Einstein’s field equations, are very complex, taking up pages in many instances. Newtonian mechanics is much simpler, but it’s definitely not the best.

Organic chemistry is needed to understand the inner workings of our bodies but takes at least a year to study and a large tome to go through. Bleeding is easy, but hardly an appropriate medical treatment.

And so on.

I say Ockham, like so many other medieval monks, was just full of crap. And that is my simplest explanation for him.

SLD

 

[skepticalbip]

I think you are railing against the misuse of "Entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily". Sure Newtonian mechanics is simpler than Relativity but Newton did not include the necessary terms required to explain observations. He did pretty well explain what was observable using the state of the art technology of his time but not what is observable today. Einstein offered a model that does explain today's observations.

Maybe you would like Isaac Newton's restatement of Occam's razor better; "We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances."

 

[rousseau]

Occam's Razor definitely isn't scientific and bullet-proof by any means, but it has it's utility as a rule of thumb. That utility mostly comes down to quelling people's over-active imagination, when there's a more down-to-earth explanation for something.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I hear this a lot, and frankly I’m getting tired of it. The simplest explanation is the correct one. Or words to that effect. Of course that’s not how Ockham put it, but he did say that pluralities should not be multiplied beyond necessity. Somehow it got morphed into our modern catchphrase. Regardless, I say it’s past time to call this whole point bullshit. I realize that this may be controversial here, but bear me out.

Not bullshit at all.

First, Ockham proposed this as a way to explain the miracle of the Eucharist. And the simplest explanation is that goddidit. Ergo there is a god. And he’s the Christian one and you better convert now. No wonder they made him a saint. Of course, the Eucharist is amongst the most bullshittiest thing in Christianity. But admittedly goddidit is the simplest explanation I can think of. Goddidit is the simplest explanation of everything, and if we stuck to old billie's maxim we’d still be in the dark ages.

No. Goddidit is not the simplest explanation because now you have to explain god.

 

[bigfield]

First, Ockham proposed this as a way to explain the miracle of the Eucharist. And the simplest explanation is that goddidit. Ergo there is a god. And he’s the Christian one and you better convert now. No wonder they made him a saint. Of course, the Eucharist is amongst the most bullshittiest thing in Christianity. But admittedly goddidit is the simplest explanation I can think of. Goddidit is the simplest explanation of everything, and if we stuck to old billie's maxim we’d still be in the dark ages.

It's ironic the Ockham failed to apply his own rule.

As Loren already pointed out, there's an explanation with one less entity: god doesn't exist, therefore the Eucharist is bullshit.

The challenge in applying the razor is finding entities to slice off of your explanation. It didn't occur to Ockham that God Himself could be excised, so he missed the most parsimonious explanation.

The real explanations for modern science are not simple. The equations of General Relativity, i.e. the solutions to Einstein’s field equations, are very complex, taking up pages in many instances. Newtonian mechanics is much simpler, but it’s definitely not the best.

I would argue that Goddidit is not an explanation at all.

 

[Poppa Popobawa]

. . .

Organic chemistry is needed to understand the inner workings of our bodies but takes at least a year to study and a large tome to go through. Bleeding is easy, but hardly an appropriate medical treatment.

. . .

Organic chemistry and the lengthy study and tomes of reading, are not multiplying beyond necessity. They are multiplying out of necessity.

That "goddidit", is not the simplest explanation for things, because it introduces loads of complexity, like: "What is this god? How did this god do it? Where is this god? What's the evidence for this god? Etc." Now that's a load of complexity.

If the universe is so complex that it needs to be explained by introducing a god into the explanatory substrate, (and/or superstructure), then that god must be so much more complex that the universe itself, having all of the knowledge and power and all, to make the universe and all. Thus the god itself would need to be explained, due its own complexity, and even greater complexity than that of the universe, otherwise it's special pleading. To avoid special pleading, the theist must propose a super-god, and for that, an even more super super-god, and so on in infinite regression, (or perhaps progression). Each super-god must be over and above the one/(s) at a lower level, just as the first, (supposed), god is transcendent over the universe itself.

Occam's Razor says to me: "Omit the entire god part(s) of the chain, as it/(they) add complexity unnecessarily, where natural explanations do the trick on their own. If the natural explanations do the trick, then of course, something is amiss, (our knowledge is incomplete), but adding the god line of reasoning is unwarranted, and contradicts Occam's Razor.

Of course, Occam's Razor does not say that the simplest explanation is the correct one, simply that when something is fully adequately explained, there's no need to add complexity out of wish fulfillment, (such the theist plugging in their favourite god, and saying: "So my god exists").

Medical treatments can be complex out of the necessity of making use of a full and correct understanding of how the living being works, and how to most reliably fix its maladies, given our current state of knowledge.

Cheers, Pops.

 

[Politesse]

I've never seen any good defense of Ockham's Razor, so I simply ignore it. If it's "just a useful rule of thumb" applicable only in hand-picked scenarios, there are better rules of thumb out there that correspond to actual data rather than some subjective appraisal of what constitutes "simplest".

Many versions of the Razor include the preface "All things being equal...", another reason to be suspicious of the principle. They seldom really are.

 

[bilby]

It's a statement of elegance. The simplest explanation that fits all of the known facts is the best currently available explanation.

But the known facts can (and often do) expand, rendering the previous best explanation demonstrably false.

There are very few statements outside mathematics that cannot be improved by adding "although in the real world, things are more complicated than that". The value of Ockham's Razor is that it warns against wild speculation about the exact nature of that real world complexity, which is typically unknown.

 

[DBT]

Ockham's Razor as a warning against wild speculation is a good way of putting it.

 

[Politesse]

Ockham's Razor as a warning against wild speculation is a good way of putting it.

Then why not say that?

 

[rousseau]

The thing is, I doubt it was ever meant to be taken as seriously as it's being taken in this thread. It's just an occasionally useful heuristic which gives people a baseline for thinking about things that happen to them, not an ipso facto scientific theorem.

 

[rousseau]

Philosophical Razor

In philosophy, a razor is a principle or rule of thumb that allows one to eliminate ("shave off") unlikely explanations for a phenomenon, or avoid unnecessary actions

 

[Jokodo]

I've never seen any good defense of Ockham's Razor, so I simply ignore it. If it's "just a useful rule of thumb" applicable only in hand-picked scenarios, there are better rules of thumb out there that correspond to actual data rather than some subjective appraisal of what constitutes "simplest".

It's not about being simple, but about the number of unattested "facts", or additional hypotheses, required to explain a given observation.

For example, given the observation that blacks and latinos are dying of COVID-19 at significantly than what corresponds to their share of the population in a number of US states and cities, there's a number of simple explanations I could imagine.

- Caucasians being partially immune to it for genetic reasons
- White supremacists going around spraying patients' snot and saliva into minorities' faces.

while the likely true explanation is more complex and involves how race is a proxy of social status and living conditions, how blacks and latinos are more likely to still be out working in low-skill "essential" jobs, more likely to be forced to work informally defying stay-at-home order to make ends meet as they have lower savings on average, more frequently live in close quarters with older family members, more likely to be underinsured and thus hesitant to call at a hospital until when it's already pretty bad, and/or more likely to have poor health already making them more susceptible. Modelling how all of these factors conspire to a death rate more than twice as high as the white population in some places is the definition of complex. It is however the preferred explanation as by Occam's razor since all of the factors listed are independently attested and can even be quantified to some extent through cenus data, while neither genes conferring immunity against SARS-CoV-2 nor white supremacists systematically infecting blacks are attested.

 

[Politesse]

The thing is, I doubt it was ever meant to be taken as seriously as it's being taken in this thread. It's just an occasionally useful heuristic which gives people a baseline for thinking about things that happen to them, not an ipso facto scientific theorem.

Yes, people always say that once it is meaningfully challenged. Which is why I feel free to ignore it. I have no need for "rules of thumb" that don't stand up to scrutiny. It may seem silly to try and measure whether a stitch in time in fact saves nine, but the real silliness to me is following a rule - or using it in support of an otherwise serious philosophical argument - if that rule does not itself have any substantial basis.

 

[Politesse]

while the likely true explanation is more complex and involves how race is a proxy of social status and living conditions, how blacks and latinos are more likely to still be out working in low-skill "essential" jobs, more likely to be forced to work informally defying stay-at-home order to make ends meet as they have lower savings on average, more frequently live in close quarters with older family members, more likely to be underinsured and thus hesitant to call at a hospital until when it's already pretty bad, and/or more likely to have poor health already making them more susceptible. Modelling how all of these factors conspire to a death rate more than twice as high as the white population in some places is the definition of complex. It is however the preferred explanation as by Occam's razor since all of the factors listed are independently attested and can even be quantified to some extent through cenus data, while neither genes conferring immunity against SARS-CoV-2 nor white supremacists systematically infecting blacks are attested.

And how does "Ockham's Razor" in any way help you reach that realization, in a way that simply following the scientific method wouldn't do a better job of?

 

[rousseau]

The thing is, I doubt it was ever meant to be taken as seriously as it's being taken in this thread. It's just an occasionally useful heuristic which gives people a baseline for thinking about things that happen to them, not an ipso facto scientific theorem.

Yes, people always say that once it is meaningfully challenged. Which is why I feel free to ignore it. I have no need for "rules of thumb" that don't stand up to scrutiny. It may seem silly to try and measure whether a stitch in time in fact saves nine, but the real silliness to me is following a rule - or using it in support of an otherwise serious philosophical argument - if that rule does not itself have any substantial basis.

Sure, applying it to a rigorously contested debate would likely be misplaced, I don't think that's what it's commonly used for. It's not meant to replace serious analysis for significant problems, it's just a thinking tool that can be used if/when you find appropriate.

So if, for example, I hear a loud noise in my house at 2 am I can likely use Occam's Razor to assume my cat just did something, rather than that someone broke in and I'm about to be murdered. But if you also wanted to completely ignore it as a tool that would be valid too. And not taking it seriously as a tool in certain types of debates would definitely be valid as well.

Nobody ever said it's supposed to stand up to some kind of objective standard, all of the time.

 

[Jokodo]

while the likely true explanation is more complex and involves how race is a proxy of social status and living conditions, how blacks and latinos are more likely to still be out working in low-skill "essential" jobs, more likely to be forced to work informally defying stay-at-home order to make ends meet as they have lower savings on average, more frequently live in close quarters with older family members, more likely to be underinsured and thus hesitant to call at a hospital until when it's already pretty bad, and/or more likely to have poor health already making them more susceptible. Modelling how all of these factors conspire to a death rate more than twice as high as the white population in some places is the definition of complex. It is however the preferred explanation as by Occam's razor since all of the factors listed are independently attested and can even be quantified to some extent through cenus data, while neither genes conferring immunity against SARS-CoV-2 nor white supremacists systematically infecting blacks are attested.

And how does "Ockham's Razor" in any way help you reach that realization, in a way that simply following the scientific method wouldn't do a better job of?

The scientific method tells us that hypotheses should be testable, ideally but not strictly necessarily with current means, and not contradict the existing body if knowledge. As far as I can tell, the genetic explanation qualifies.

 

[Politesse]

Sure, applying it to a rigorously contested debate would likely be misplaced, I don't think that's what it's commonly used for. It's not meant to replace serious analysis for significant problems, it's just a thinking tool that can be used if/when you find appropriate.

So if, for example, I hear a loud noise in my house at 2 am I can likely use Occam's Razor to assume my cat just did something, rather than that someone broke in and I'm about to be murdered. But if you also wanted to completely ignore it as a tool that would be valid too. And not taking it seriously as a tool in certain types of debates would definitely be valid as well.

Nobody ever said it's supposed to stand up to some kind of objective standard, all of the time.

Then you have clearly never debated the existence of God in a public forum. Not only is that specific debate the most common application of Ockham's Razor in the real world, I seldom hear it applied to anything else quite frankly. Observe most of its uses in this very thread. I kind of give props to Jokodo for coming up with something novel for once.

 

[rousseau]

Sure, applying it to a rigorously contested debate would likely be misplaced, I don't think that's what it's commonly used for. It's not meant to replace serious analysis for significant problems, it's just a thinking tool that can be used if/when you find appropriate.

So if, for example, I hear a loud noise in my house at 2 am I can likely use Occam's Razor to assume my cat just did something, rather than that someone broke in and I'm about to be murdered. But if you also wanted to completely ignore it as a tool that would be valid too. And not taking it seriously as a tool in certain types of debates would definitely be valid as well.

Nobody ever said it's supposed to stand up to some kind of objective standard, all of the time.

Then you have clearly never debated the existence of God in a public forum. Not only is that specific debate the most common application of Ockham's Razor in the real world, I seldom hear it applied to anything else quite frankly. Observe most of its uses in this very thread. I kind of give props to Jokodo for coming up with something novel for once.

Fair enough, but people using it incorrectly isn't proof that it's wrong or not useful, but rather that people are willing to commit all kinds of fallacies to prove points that they're emotionally invested in. I mean, we live in a world where 40% of the US population supports trump, given that I don't expect many of us to use logical axioms correctly.

Hell even on the philosophy stack exchange, filled with purported philosophers, the brunt of the questions start from silly premises. So I wouldn't hate the razor, I'd hate on the people who use it incorrectly.

 

[DBT]

Ockham's Razor as a warning against wild speculation is a good way of putting it.

Then why not say that?

Just saying it may not have the same effect. Someone may not believe that their proposition happens to be a matter of wild speculation, therefore "wild speculation" does not apply to them.