Occams razor

>occams razor
Why is this fucking fallacious method ever taken seriously?

Other urls found in this thread:

quoteinvestigator.com/2011/05/13/einstein-simple/
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam's_razor#Mathematical
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heuristic
twitter.com/SFWRedditImages

Because it's usually right!

A rule saying that one should look at the easiest solution first and you wonder _why_ it's taken serious?

If you want a better reason: entropy.

>occams razor
not science or math

>A rule saying that one should look at the easiest solution first
that's not occam's razor

kys

The rule says you shouldn't invoke entities unless there's no alternative.
If you can't find your car keys, either
A) You're absent minded and just forget where you left them
B) Invisible pixies or kobolds took them off the table and hid them in some unlikely spot

The smart money ought to be on A.

If you can't find the crystal spheres the planets ride on and there's a simpler way (Kepler and Newton) of explaining why the planets move as they do, MAYBE there aren't any crystal spheres.

Informal """"""logic"""""""" aka theory of argumentation is something people take by heart, without knowing must if the rules are not the same as proper formal logic. Informal fallacies are rules of thumb that shouldn't be taken by heart in all contexts. The fallacied come when there's a crucial mistep in someones argumentation, but it really doesn't mean what he is saying must be wrong or worse that the one who pointed out the fallacy and/or inconsistency must be right. The thing is, that while being good at arguing is fundamental, that doesn't you can derive truth from an argument. A good argument is supposed to show merely consustency of your points, but if your premises are false then there's nothing to do. An example is looking at all the meme debates were they invite non experts of fields, but one side is smart enough to send an excelent speaker and debater. A more concrete example would be any science debate. Sending retards like bill nye who are not comfortable discussing the gritty details of climate change, who also is shit at argument and justifying science, will look like a complete moron, even if he has the much stronger premise. It's weird though, that the pop sci gang is so brain dead that they jusy say "XD le science bitch", without realizing how moronic these public figures sound, but so you could be "right" by the "wrong" means.

Why should one reject a simple theory that is working well? Occam's razor doesn't tell you to take the simplest theory but the simplest correct theory.

quoteinvestigator.com/2011/05/13/einstein-simple/

Solely because it takes less effort to take it seriously than to take every other alternative seriously.

It is a heuristic.
Try to imagine a scenario where something implausible actually does happen.
Low probability events can still happen. If a low probability event leaves the same evidence as a high probability event, you will misdiagnose the cause of the evidence in every case the low probability event happens.
The stasi in east germany would go into people's apartments when they were gone, take pictures of how everything was placed in the room, proceed to search everywhere for contraband, then use the photos to put everything back the way it was.
You can take advantage of people's reliance on such a heuristic.

I cant really speak to what dudes in other fields think, but in physics it falls neatly in line with the concept of intuition, feel, and elegance of ideas.

This. OP is suggesting occams razor is some absolute method for finding truth when really its just a practical way to choose a solution to a problem. No where does it say occams razor applies 100% of the time

Fortunately for science, the Stasi don't run the Universe.

Raffiniert ist der Herr Gott, aber boshaft ist er nicht.
God is subtle, but he is not malicious.
Inscribed in Fine Hall, Princeton University.
---------------- Albert Einstein

>If a low probability event leaves the same evidence as a high probability event, you will misdiagnose the cause of the evidence in every case the low probability event happens.
That's the entire point of even invoking probability in the first place you brainlet. We don't have perfect knowledge so going with higher probability explanations is the strategy you use for increasing the number of possible outcomes where you end up being right. If you always enact the dominant strategy when playing Texas Hold 'em you will almost certainly lose some money over some individual hands, but that doesn't mean you should try to play any differently because other strategies (or worse, no strategy and going by gut feels) will make you lose even more money even more often.

He was explaining out why occams razor doesn't always lead to the correct answer among a set of competing solutions. This has fuck all to do with poker. Consider that you might be retarded.

What is your problem with poker? It's a perfectly fine example of why his post (and retroactively yours) is (are) retarded.
>occams razor doesn't always lead to the correct answer
Which is why I explained how that's a retarded observation.
Not working 100% of the time isn't a problem you idiot. It was never meant to work 100% of the time, when you don't have perfect knowledge you choose a strategy that's likely to work more often than other strategies. What is it with you brainlet pseuds obsessing over things not being 100% perfect? Almost nothing important accomplished in human history has been the result of 100% perfect knowledge, that's an absolutely shitheaded expectation.

...

>tfw whenever I lose something I say a prayer to St. Anthony or out loud ask the time trolls to bring it back
>it works every time

Occams razor helps with my depression....

The hypothesis with the least assumptions is not necessarily the most probable, it is the simplest.

>the argument that makes the least assumptions is usually the most correct one.
hmmm

Yes it is a shitheaded expectation, which is what they were trying to explain to OP. You're literally arguing with nobody you fucking autist.

Go back and try again, you didn't read it right. The post about stasi was clearly arguing about a low probability event being possible. Which is a retarded thing to bring up. Which is exactly the response I correctly responded with.

>All things being equal
>the solution with the least dumb bullshit is usually the right one
It's not fallacious, it's called a "Razor" because it's used to shave off solutions in a non scientific situation where you have limited information.
It's an idiomatic expression up there with "if it sounds to good to be true..."
Do you think Murphy's law is an actual physical law too?

A solution with fewer or no assumptions would have a higher likelihood of being correct, because they are not diluted by assumptions which are necessarily less than 100% probable.

It was a fucking addendum to his point against OPs implication that a method had to be 100% effective in order to be practical. You wanted to prove yourself on a cambodian basket weaving forum and ended up confirming your brainlet status by arguing against an imaginary opponent

>The hypothesis with the least assumptions is not necessarily the most probable, it is the simplest.
That's not true.
You have to keep in mind Occam's razor assumes *all other things being equal*.
If all other things about two possible explanations are equal with the only difference between the two being that one would require more events happening as a prerequisite than the other, then that is by definition a case of the explanation with fewer prerequisite events being more probable. A probability is nothing more than the number of possible cases where a scenario will be the outcome divided by the total number of possible cases you're looking at.
If, again, ***all other things are equal***, then the only thing you know that differentiates the two competing explanations is that one is less probable, for the same reason there's always more of a chance a coin will land on heads one time than there is a chance a coin will land on heads ten times in a row. Each additional prerequisite event your explanation requires is another bet you're making and serves to make the probability less than the otherwise equally explanatory alternative which doesn't depend on as many bets going one way instead of another.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam's_razor#Mathematical
>One justification of Occam's razor is a direct result of basic probability theory. By definition, all assumptions introduce possibilities for error; if an assumption does not improve the accuracy of a theory, its only effect is to increase the probability that the overall theory is wrong.

No, go back and try reading again you complete idiot. There is literally no way to correctly parse that stasi anecdote as anything other than an argument that sometimes Occam's razor will lead to you missing the actual explanation.
Which is exactly what I responded to and exactly what you've repeatedly failed to understand.
Keep trying though, maybe next time you'll figure it out.

>There is literally no way to correctly parse that stasi anecdote as anything other than an argument that sometimes Occam's razor will lead to you missing the actual explanation.
No shit. That's exactly how I understood it. What the fuck is your issue with his statement?

>HURR BUT IT'S NOT 100% PERFECT
>What the fuck is your issue with his statement?
Gee, I don't know, maybe my problem with it was exactly what I wrote already, go back and read it, idiot.

He never had a problem with it being 100% perfect, hence him calling it a heuristic.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heuristic
>A heuristic technique (/hjʊəˈrJstJk/; Ancient Greek: εὑρίσkω, "find" or "discover"), often called simply a heuristic, is any approach to problem solving, learning, or discovery that employs a practical method not guaranteed to be optimal or perfect, but sufficient for the immediate goals.
>not guaranteed to be optimal or perfect, but sufficient for the immediate goals
Guy doesn't know what a heuristic is.

>He never had a problem with it being 100% perfect
You mean with it *not* being 100% perfect? And yes, he did have a problem with it not being 100% perfect, he wrote it right here:
>If a low probability event leaves the same evidence as a high probability event, you will misdiagnose the cause of the evidence in every case the low probability event happens.
Which is why I responded to say that's the entire point of even using probability here in the first place, to have a decision making strategy that works more often than not if all else is equal between the competing decisions. There is no point in bringing up situations where it results in the actual explanation being missed because that's exactly how a good strategy works by design, hence the poker example to show the difference between losing a hand which is irrelevant and a stupid thing to focus on vs. having the dominant strategy that is likely to win you the most amount of money the greatest amount of the time.
Him having called it a heuristic doesn't change anything. What did you expect, that he would have to call it a law of physics in order for him to mean it when he brings up an argument like:
>If a low probability event leaves the same evidence as a high probability event, you will misdiagnose the cause of the evidence in every case the low probability event happens.
?

Yes, I meant to say it was ****not*** 100% perfect. Nonetheless, why are you ignoring the fact that he was responding to and adding to the point that it was stupid to expect occams razor to be 100% perfect by providing an additional, real world scenario?

you seem to not understand that occams razors flaw isn't in that it doesn't consider low probability, but that it doesn't consider nondeterministic events. things like approaching a better solution might not exist and doing random shit like "pixies make the earth go round" might be the only solution if the rotation was turbulent.

That's a nice article, thanks for that!
I didn't really refer to this quote but tried to say in my own words how I interpret the razor.

>occams razor
>not science
the very core of science

You dense motherfucker. Occam's razor is philosophy of course it's "the very core of science".

There are three kinds of people who mention Occam's razor by name: those who introduce the subject, those who question the subject and those who want to sound smart despite their uneducated af opinion.

Discuss.

guess that's why I said so then
lrn2read

It's not. No actual scientist uses it. Disregard the morons in this thread.

Whats the difference between occams razor and the law that saya things go from high energy states to low energy states?

Or that water will flow against the path of least resistance.

All these seem to say the same thing.

Because it's always right

>What's the difference between the principle of least action and occams razor
Well one talks about dyanmical systems in physics and the other is a rule of thumb used in philosophy.

common sense bro hahaha

>Why should one reject a simple theory that is working well.

Define simple. Abiogenesis sounds a lot more complicated than "and god said, let their life."

>Occam's razor doesn't tell you to take the simplest theory but the simplest correct theory.

The correct theory is always the simplest correct theory, as there is only one correct theory.

but "and god said, let there be light" is too imprecise to really be a theory

I swear this exact question was asked a few weeks ago.

By definition it cannot be right.