Occam's Razor

[shenoma]

Occam's razor (also spelled Ockham's razor) is a principle attributed to the 14th-century English logician and Franciscan friar William of Ockham. The principle states that the explanation of any phenomenon should make as few assumptions as possible, eliminating, or "shaving off," those that make no difference in the observable predictions of the explanatory hypothesis or theory. The principle is often expressed in Latin as the lex parsimoniae ("law of parsimony" or "law of succinctness"):
which translates to:

entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity.

This is often paraphrased as "All things being equal, the simplest solution tends to be the best one." In other words, when multiple competing theories are equal in other respects, the principle recommends selecting the theory that introduces the fewest assumptions and postulates the fewest hypothetical entities. It is in this sense that Occam's razor is usually understood.

Originally a tenet of the reductionist philosophy of nominalism, it is more often taken today as a heuristic maxim that advises economy, parsimony, or simplicity in scientific theories.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam's_Razor

[hagbard_celine]

Ah, Occam’s Razor. (Joke: How does a skeptic avoid getting cuts on his face? He uses Occam’s Shaver!)

The problem with Occam’s Razor is that it is a reasoning superstructure, not a reasoning system you can use from the ground, baseline ignorance, up. To decide what is the most likely solution you first have to have established the likelihood of all the variables involved. For example: If my radio stopped working I would use Occam’s Razor to fix it; that is I would change the batteries first before opening it up and fiddling with its innards, because depleted batteries is the most likely reason a radio would stop functioning. But to do this I would need to already know how a radio works and how likely its batteries’ draining is compared to its mechanical reliability.