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Occam's Razor
Why is simplicity a theoretical virtue?

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Occam's Razor

just
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Posted 11/28/09 - 02:00 PM:	#41
occam's razor is a tool to be employed to simplify an idea so that it becomes easier and more effectively communicated. Once agreement is reached on an idea then it can be advanced or made more complicated in the name of scientific advancement/development. One could argue that even the introduction of the term 'occam's razor' into any scientific discussion could be an attempt reinforce the idea that a simplification of a concept will help us make advances in it (i.e make it more complex). Examples abound. Including the artificially contrived one (provided for illustrative purposes I gather?) re: Positing a being more complicated than the early universe as pre-existing it obviously violates Occam's razor because the regression becomes one of increasing complexity. I feel I need to agree with your assumption that the being (i.e. God) you talk of is more complicated than the early universe as pre-existing to accept you statement. That's ok, I can do that. Then what? I still feel the need to move on to the destination/ or next stopover on the journey though. As for violating occam's razor: boy that's a tuff call! Either there is evidence of it or there is not. There may even be evidence of it being applied, but not very well. It is a kind of problem solving tool, as opposed to a rule that the use of the term 'violates' seems to infer to me. I am reminded of the story of Darwin rocking the foundations of science with his propostion of evolutionary theory. Does evolution complicate the more simple idea that god is the originator of species? Wait, is evolution more simple that the god idea? How many of the concepts that make up the hypothesis of evolution are really necessary? Who decides the 'God' idea is more simple? Answer: enough of the right people to make it another generally acceptable possiblity? There needs to be some sort of consensus of agreement to start with (maybe even eventually?). The hardest part is: Who decides what should be included in a hypothesis to make it useful while at the same time ensuring that the unnecessary complications are eliminated? We or you the people or person making the hypothetical propostion, and possibly a partcipative audience,... do. We can always agree to disagree.

Arkady
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Posted 11/28/09 - 02:46 PM:	#42
I agree, Just, that determining which is the "simpler" hypothesis is often less-than-straightforward. Personally, I believe that OR is most fruitfully applied when discriminating between 2 relatively similar hypotheses.
"The sleep of reason produces monsters." -Francisco Goya

baden511
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Posted 11/28/09 - 03:39 PM:	#43
heyitspeter wrote: Hahahhaha Um, I'm starting to get the feeling I'm not dealing with an adult here Regular definitions are sequences of words that explain other words and are found in dictionaries. You can't make the word "God" mean whatever you want otherwise it's no longer God. I'm sort of bemused as to why that's so hilarious. Look, if you are just a kid on here for fun, fair enough. But, if you want to actually have a rational conversation then I'm here. Edited by baden511 on 11/28/09 - 03:59 PM
"Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man." Moses (Numbers 31:17-18) Quality of life is determined by conscious/unconscious strategies in context that are benficial/detrimental with regard to immediate/anticipated states of consciousness.

baden511
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Posted 11/28/09 - 03:56 PM:	#44
just wrote: I am reminded of the story of Darwin rocking the foundations of science with his propostion of evolutionary theory. Does evolution complicate the more simple idea that god is the originator of species? Wait, is evolution more simple that the god idea? How many of the concepts that make up the hypothesis of evolution are really necessary? Who decides the 'God' idea is more simple? Answer: enough of the right people to make it another generally acceptable possiblity? Evolution is ruled by a beautifully simple and elegant idea called natural selection; those genes that cause their phenotypes to be passed on get replicated and those that don't don't. The variation in genes is caused by random mutation but the environment determines which set of random variants survives in a non-random way. That's basically it. God is a supernatural being who lives everywhere and nowhere, who created the universe from nothing, who makes man write contradictory books, causes miracles thus defying the laws of physics, can see into our heads, has created heaven and hell, speaks to special people who pass on his message, makes sure there is absolutely no evidence of his existence and after creating man also created evidence of evolution to trick him into believing that He does not exist. Is evolution more simple than the God idea? Yes. I'll take the science over the fairy story any day.
"Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man." Moses (Numbers 31:17-18) Quality of life is determined by conscious/unconscious strategies in context that are benficial/detrimental with regard to immediate/anticipated states of consciousness.

heyitspeter
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Posted 11/28/09 - 05:01 PM:	#45
baden511 wrote: Um, I'm starting to get the feeling I'm not dealing with an adult here Regular definitions are sequences of words that explain other words and are found in dictionaries. You can't make the word "God" mean whatever you want otherwise it's no longer God. I'm sort of bemused as to why that's so hilarious. Look, if you are just a kid on here for fun, fair enough. But, if you want to actually have a rational conversation then I'm here. Sorry that wasn't very productive. This is why I thought what you said was funny. I'll be precise and try not to use loaded terms. The "thing" or "substance" I hypothesized that gives the simplest and necessarily accurate explanation of all data we could possibly collect is 'the creator of the universe', 'the thing that makes everything exactly as it is', whatever that happens to be. I think the term 'God' is a very nice shorthand for this theoretical construct, and that most people would agree, but you obviously don't. I give you free reign to call it whatever you want. Choose whatever you think has the least metaphysical baggage. Whatever you decide to call it, it will not satisfy the scientific community, therefore, Occam's razor is not followed by the scientific community.

brainpharte
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Posted 11/28/09 - 05:20 PM:	#46
mikelepore wrote: I think you can't apply the rule here because you need enough data to say that two possible explanations have the same degree of agreement between theory and observation, but one of the suggestions is simpler. In the example you gave, I expect there to be no correlation found between the performance of ritual and improved health, so we wouldn't have any agreement between theory and observation that may be reworded into two competing theories. On the other hand, if there really is statistical data that the ritual helps to cure the disease, but to the same extent with or without the use of incense, now we have two competing theories, the necessary incense theory and the theory that doesn't mention incense, where the incense would be identified as an unnecessary "entity", and now the rule is useful. Yeah. My (apparently failed) attempt at humor was that everything but the antibiotics obviously was superfluous, and that Occam's Razor would cut them off. My understanding of Occam's razor is that it's primary thrust is to cut off alleged causes or explanations that actually are superflous, (as for instance determined with analysis of variance.) Is this incorrect?
"I don't see much sense in that," said Rabbit. "No," said Pooh humbly, "there isn't. But there was going to be when I began it. It's just that something happened to it along the way."

baden511
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Posted 11/28/09 - 08:05 PM:	#47
heyitspeter wrote: I'll be precise and try not to use loaded terms. The "thing" or "substance" I hypothesized that gives the simplest and necessarily accurate explanation of all data we could possibly collect is 'the creator of the universe', 'the thing that makes everything exactly as it is', whatever that happens to be. I think the term 'God' is a very nice shorthand for this theoretical construct, and that most people would agree, but you obviously don't. I give you free reign to call it whatever you want. Choose whatever you think has the least metaphysical baggage. Whatever you decide to call it, it will not satisfy the scientific community, therefore, Occam's razor is not followed by the scientific community. That makes more sense to me and I realize there are different conceptions of God. When most people talk about God I take them to mean a personal God unless they say otherwise. Also, I agree there is a limit to where science can take us here. Heidegger addresses that in an interesting way in his essay "What is Metaphysics?"
"Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man." Moses (Numbers 31:17-18) Quality of life is determined by conscious/unconscious strategies in context that are benficial/detrimental with regard to immediate/anticipated states of consciousness.

mikelepore
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1 of 1 people found this post helpful Posted 11/28/09 - 09:36 PM:	#48
Here's an example of the use of Occam's Razor in science. For a while no one had any idea what was causing action at a distance in the case of gravity, the electric force, or the magnetic force. Therefore, they spoke of fields, while giving them what we call operational definitions - defining them in terms of what they do. If a test charge q is placed into a region of space where there exists an electic field E, it will experience a force F=qE. But what is an electric field? Answer - it's the force per unit charge: E=F/q. "But what it is really?", someone asks -- at which point the professor explains that this is a physics class, not a philosophy class. It "is" what it is observed to do. Similarly, a test charge moving with velocity v through a region where we have a magnetic field B, where v forms an angle theta with B, will experience a force F=qvB sin theta. Up goes the hand - Professor, what exactly is a magnetic field? Answer - The magnetic field B is defined as B=F/(qv sin theta). Gravity, the same sort of treatement from Newton. Now, we could have assumed that space is filled with an array of invisible little gizmos that transmit these signals back and forth, but it wouldn't have added any predictive power, so no such assumption could be justified. Later in the 20th century some scientists began to expect more predictive power from a new model, then they felt a need to explain action at a distance in terms of mechanism, such as exchanging bosons.

hedone
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Posted 11/29/09 - 12:07 PM:	#49
heyitspeter wrote: Reductio: "If we hold to Occam's Razor, parsimony/simplicity dictates that we believe the hypothesis that God makes everything exactly as it is. This cannot be contradicted by empirical fact and so it has perfect predictive validity and perfect agreement with all the data we have ever collected. Okay, so if "God makes 'everything' exactly as it is" I am going to assume that by everything, you mean the universe and all within it, then we will put this theory to the test to see i we've arrived at the simplest answer: 1) The universe began with the big bang (that is a fact supported by the data we have about it's origin) 2) The big bang was an event that began when the universe expanded into what it is from a singularity (a point of space with 0 volume and infinite mass (I think, correct me if I am wrong)). In other words, the universe pretty much made itself 3) From this we can conclude that either a) the universe is god or b) god is not the universe and doesn't exist or c) he is the big bang (and is therefore an event, which would mean he is not a being, also proving the being doesnt exist) Since your arguement is that he does exist, we have to go with a. So if we conclude that god is the universe then we have a problem, the term 'god' is rendered useless. So if god began with the big bang, using the term god instead of universe, what caused god? So we realize right here, not the simplest answer, nor is it an answer at all. If god is not the universe, then he doesnt exist. If he is the universe, then what is the point of even using the term "god"? Arkady wrote: I don't believe that that is the simplest hypothesis. On the contrary, positing the existence of God to explain the universe takes on board a whole lot of metaphysical baggage. Saying the universe "just is" as a brute fact is in fact far simpler. And not only that, positing the existance of god and saying from the outset that he is creator inevitably leads to either a) saying he/she/it doesn't exist or b) is the material universe, therefore rendering the term useless. As for saying, "it just is", it depends. Is that a conclusion based on how it came into existence? Then if it "just is" it "just always was" so we can then imply that it never changes, which is not the case, so it can not be the correct answer to how things came into being. baden511 wrote: Absolutely wrong. I said that kind of regress for a reason. Here it is. The regular definition of God is: "A being conceived as the perfect, omnipotent, omniscient originator and ruler of the universe, the principal object of faith and worship in monotheistic religions." Monotheistic religions do not have a monopoly of the term, and in both english and in semitic, the word god was originally a being/beings that were not perfect, omnipotent, omniscient, not always creator and definitely not all the rulers of the world. As for current religions, in particular hinduism, which hold a fairly common view of god in india that he is one that can be viewed many ways. We can not just assume that the only way god can be defined is the modern abrahamic-born definition. Nor can we assume that it is a monotheistic nor omni-anything being. While I am not argueing for the existance of god, to say that he is wrong because he uses a noncommon (if thats what you mean by regular), thats like saying scientists are wrong because they've changed the definition of the universe from the all to the part that originated in our big bang. Its just nonsense. We don't need God in astrophysics. We may need something we can't explain but to use the word "God" with all the anthropormorphic and supernatural connotations that entails and then to say that that doesn't complicate things is frankly absurd. How do we know god is anthropomorphic or supernatural? Have we defined what we mean by god? Does anyone really agree on what it/he/she/they are? Though I do agree its unnecessary and pointless, I am just saying. And your contention that we can think of God as some kind of "light matter" is about as sensible as saying God is a cabbage. If there is such a thing as light matter, it is light matter not God. Other than a photon, there is no such thing to my knowledge, nor is there any room in the working models of any scientific theory for it. heyitspeter wrote: Sorry that wasn't very productive. This is why I thought what you said was funny. Wikipedia is notoriously unreliable for information. As or thinking something is funny, that isn't why they don't think you are an adult, it's you just posting hahahaha as a reply, its immature. I'll be precise and try not to use loaded terms. The "thing" or "substance" I hypothesized that gives the simplest and necessarily accurate explanation of all data we could possibly collect is 'the creator of the universe', 'the thing that makes everything exactly as it is', whatever that happens to be. And from that I have concluded that your term god then means 'the universe' rendering it a useless term or proving he doesnt exist. As for 'creating everything exactly as it is', you arrive at more than one possible solution, either 1) god is the universe and he is never done creating or 2) he is done creating (though things are not done forming) so he doesnt exist. The problem with your formula is that it's like trying to do a math problem but only going half way. you either go all the way to a conclusion or why even bother? Or you justify why you stopped right in the middle. Or simply the formula is either incomplete or you really didnt have one to begin with. And you arent really using logic at all. I think the term 'God' is a very nice shorthand for this theoretical construct, I would no doubt agree if we can 1) define what god is and does, 2) explain the use of the term and the theoretical construct and the relation between the two, 3) and most of all, if it works and is better than the already current theories out there. Otherwise, it's useless and unscientific. Also, we really don't have a use for a 'god' in any current theories of how the universe came to be. And we are at a point where answers are getting simpler and simpler, adding in a 'god' at this point is just going to complicate things and add nothing of substance.

heyitspeter
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Posted 12/01/09 - 02:23 AM:	#50
hedone wrote: Okay, so if "God makes 'everything' exactly as it is" I am going to assume that by everything, you mean the universe and all within it, then we will put this theory to the test to see i we've arrived at the simplest answer: 1) The universe began with the big bang (that is a fact supported by the data we have about it's origin) 2) The big bang was an event that began when the universe expanded into what it is from a singularity (a point of space with 0 volume and infinite mass (I think, correct me if I am wrong)). In other words, the universe pretty much made itself etc. I think you're hyperintellectualizing my hypothesis. Take this extremely similar example: "Why did that ball move? Because something moved it." I don't owe you an explanation of what moved the mover. What you wanted was an explanation of a phenomenon, and I gave it to you. Newton doesn't owe us an explanation of what gravity is after he uses it to explain the movement of objects, planets, etc. Gravity just is the thing that attracts massive bodies to each other. Newton doesn't know what causes gravity or what gravity "really is" (whatever that means) any better than we do, but that doesn't make his hypothesis unscientific. On the contrary, I think gravity is just about the best example of a scientific hypothesis that one can give. Now we can talk about how my "something" hypothesis is deficient, but one way that it isn't deficient is simplicity. It's pretty clear that it is (more or less) the simplest hypothesis we can give. And yet you and I both, along with every scientist worth his or her salt are going to reject it as our preferred theory because none of us follow Occam's Razor. Edit: I don't mean that we should follow Occam's razor. I hope that's not implied. I think the kinds of cases I've been describing show that Ocam's razor is a pretty stupid imperative. Edited by heyitspeter on 12/01/09 - 02:29 AM

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