Talk:Occam's razor/Archive 1
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
I'm putting this expansion request for the "justifications" section here because currently, what it says is "people used to think it was metaphysically sound, turns out it's actually not, but it IS epistemologically and probabilistically sound, and as for why, er, go read a book." --AceMyth 03:15, August 30, 2005 (UTC)
This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | Archive 2 | Archive 3 | ā | Archive 5 |
I made no changes, but I wanted to note that I'm uncomfortable with the statement that "Put into everyday language, it says The simplest explanation is the best." That's not what it says; it would be more accurate to say that it says that the explanation with the fewest assumptions is best, which is not the same thing. Indeed, one of the ways to "simplify" an explanation is to make more assumptions. Admittedly, the example used of the tree refers to fewer assumptions, but the confusion of "simplest" with "fewest assumptions" has caused no end of confusion on this and I think should be avoided here.
I changed the storm/tree argument simply because the simplest explanation following the storm is NOT lightning, but a wind, and most trees felled in storms are knocked over by wind, NOT lightning. --[[user:jaknouse]
The tree is charred, not merely felled. It's burnt, in other words; wind cannot burn.
In any case an explanation that includes aliens may account for the tree but it predicts a great deal more than an explanation of the tree using just the wind. As such it is not the case that both explanations make identical predictions. Which version of Ockham's applies in this case? --[user:GKochanowsky]