/sci/ - Science & Math

>>11689119
I don't know strict definition of Occham's razor.
Is it possible to define it mathematically?

>>11689119
nice IQ lmao

>>11689119
>Occam's razor says that when presented with competing hypotheses that make the same predictions, one should select the solution with the fewest assumptions, and it is not meant to be a way of choosing between hypotheses that make different predictions.
google it before you shit up the board

>>11689148
I know what Occam's Razor is. I'm saying there is no actual reason to pick the one with "fewer assumptions" because that has nothing to do with how reality actually works.

>>11689119
Pseuds think it is some kind of trump card that magically wins them an argument when in reality it just shows what a moron they are.

The entire premise of Occam's razor is "all things being equal" when in reality all things are rarely if ever equal. If you want to "apply" Occam's razor to a disagreement/argument you are having with someone then the Given has to be that you are equal in education on the topic you are disagreeing with about.

What a janitor at McDonald's, or additionally some moron on reddit or /sci/ thinks is the simplest solution for an effective cooling system on a spacex rocket means jack shit when compared with what a PHD from MIT in rocketry think is the simplest solution.

Occam's razor is supposed to be applied only for personal reflection for people that actually know wtf they using it on. The smallest number of assumptions to make to come to a theory is obviously the best one to test first but it doesn't mean it will be the right one just because you are using less assumptions (variables). It just means it is the best candidate to test first.

Problem: I am constantly hungry all day
Occam's razor solution: eat more
Actual solution: kill the 10ft tapeworm in your gut with medication

If you aren't knowledgeable about what you are applying it too you will get more wrong answers than correct ones so yes it is a great pseud filter watching retards "apply" it and thinking it is some trump card that wins them the argument.

>>11689149
It doesn't matter how reality "actually" works. What matters is how useful and usable the hypothesis is when trying to predict reality. In that case, the hypothesis with the fewest assumptions is superior.

>>11689174
>Pseuds
Why do you think using this word makes you look like anything but an uneducated memespouting child?

>>11689119
I think simple and complex are not as different as we might think... there is a very fine line between the two, sometimes all that separates a complex argument from simplicity is a subtle intuition.

>>11689303
>t. Pseud

>>11689119
It is mostly used to make conspiracy people fuck off.

>>11689119
things should be made as simple as possible but not any more!

Pseuds gonna 'pseud.

Currently the inherent value of its wisdom is overshadowed by its popsci trendiness

>>11689199
>It doesn't matter how reality "actually" works.
Wrong
>In that case, the hypothesis with the fewest assumptions is superior.
No it isn't.

Someone cited me Occam's razor when I browsed pol in 2016.

We should secretly subtract five points IQ if users refer to trendy phrases like Occam's razor, or dunning-kruger Etc.
Perhaps even '-10', if done in an actual IQ , or elon musk thread...
What other trendy phrases are overused besides Occam's razor and the dunning-kruger effect?

>>11689369
If you voted for trump, your opinion is automatically worthless according to this.

>>11689371
R3eeeeeeeeeeeee

>>11689119
Why is "simple but right" not a thing?

someone's mad their convoluted retarded theory isn't well accepted

>>11689119
>Why do people use Occham's razor

It makes them sound smart and it gives them an ego stroking.

I have never, not once, heard Occam's Razor being used properly either.

Most people try to use it because it was used in the movie Contact.

Occam’s razor is a tool that is useful particularly for people with subhuman intelligence like /pol/. If you think Occam’s razor is stupid I would bet my life you believe in a bunch of stupid bullshit like holocaust denial, creationism, god and other low IQ stuff.

>>11689433
>Why is "simple but right" not a thing?

Because you have to be certain you are addressing all pertinent information, not just the information you choose to acknowledge.

So, depending on what information you choose to use, you can come to completely different conclusions about the same subject.

Occam created it because he found that many uneducated people over-complicated what he thought were easy and simple tasks.

So he wanted people to think of things in the easiest and simplest manner, given whatever task you are trying to accomplish.

So basically, if you use or cite Occam's Razor, you are openly admitting you are of lesser intellect.

But, people today think that by using it they sound smart.

>>11689371
>Knowledge of Physics = Knowledge of Politics
You know, I used to feel guilty about not voting.

>>11689149
I'd call it a meta hypothesis. Its in no way provable, but what have worked so far is that simplicity or path of least resistance is preferred in nature

Is my understanding messed up? I read about the razor in books, as a child but it seems that the internet has boiled it down to stupid. I thought it was removing superfluous detail from a complicated system or event. To identify the important contributing factors of the situation. Like removing ornaments from a Christmas tree, to see what kind of tree it is. This kind of thinking is good at solving problems in mechanical shit. Am I thinking of something else, or is this occam? My understanding of DK isn't quite what the average definition seems to be, either.

>>11689487
I'd rather people with at least some sort of critical thinking abilities voted

>>11689457
You would lose your life in that bet, dumbfuck

>>11689119
This picture pretty much sums up what I'm witnessing every time I tell people why I can't build muscle.

>>11689529
Things as they are, it's picking a snake out of a bag to bite you. Critical thinking says don't put your hand in the bag, but it's not like the current two-party system is going away anytime soon.

>>11689520
Don't listen to the memesters here, /pol/ invasion has lowered the IQ of this board to negatives.

>>11689567
Yeah, can agree on that

>>11689529
When you think critically you get NPC morons like this that think calling you some groupthink outgroup label is a valid argument >>11689600

The truth is if you actually think critically you are more alone than you think

>>11689600
It used to be that smart people knew stuff. Now, everyone knows stuff. It is difficult to know who the dummies are.

>>11689457
Like all morons you have it ass backwards if you can't prove the holohoax was bullshit and God is real surprise you were the low IQ moron all along!

>>11689119
It is a reasoning that works in the short term.
In reality, the scope of considered phenomenon is constantly expanding so the simplest hypothesis that was selected when the amount of considered phenomenon was low will almost surely be wrong when the scope is expanded.
While this can be said of any hypothesis working in a narrow scope, the fact that the simplest was chosen almost guarantees that it will not be generalizable when the scope is expanded.

There is a notion of "code maintainability" in computer science which basically means writing code in a way that will make it easier to update and add to in the future.
Although doing so means more work in the present, if done correctly, it saves work in the long term.
Mathematicians also try to do things in the most general case so that they can be added to or specialized easily according to possible future applications.

Basically, Occam's razor is a greedy algorithm that optimizes locally but not globally.

>>11689119
>it is not actually, in any way, a valid method of rationalizing
Citation needed.

>>11689119
It's a useful hammer to hit retards over the head with then they start making shit up out of nowhere to explain things they're uncomfortable with. Take the origin of life for example. We know evolution is true, and we know basic self sustaining chemical reactions exist. The simple answer for biogenesis is "it just happened by chance". But some people aren't happy with that answer, which is the simplest one given all the evidence we have. So they say it was god, or aliens, or that god is an alien. Pretty much just tacking shit on without any proof and demanding their answer be taken seriously. The thing is, you can do that in any direction and you can go as far as you want. You could make up a story about Earth having a fight with the planetary Gods and losing, with the punishment being the seeding of a killing fungus called "life" which will slowly poison the Earth over millions of years.
At some point you just have to tell someone to shut the fuck up because they're obviously just making shit up. Occam's razor gives you ammo to do this. You can say "well the random by chance explanation doesn't have any evidence, but at least it relies on the fewest assumptions to work."

>>11689119
it's just a heuristic, a simple tool that allows for quick decisions based on a reliable trend

for example, you are OP, and therefore a fag. works 100% of the time.

>>11689119
True, occams razor is not good for discovering truth. However it is useful to limit the amount of information/theory you a juggling to make progress. Say you have 2 ways of explaining something, one with a single overarching factor, one with say 3 or 4. You should TEST the theory with one variable first, this is the best thing to do, because then you can find something conclusive.

Occams razor does not state the simplest solution is best, only that you should not increase how much info you are juggling/theorizing without a specific need to do so.

>>11690074
I love how it’s impossible to satirize /pol/. That’s an achievement to be so unintelligent you can’t even be parodied because nothing is more embarrassingly stupid than the reality

>>11689362
let's say all assumptions have a equal probability of being true, which is a good approximation when the nature of the assumption is that mysterious
then, the theory with less assumptions will have a higher probability of being true
of course, if you can reason it out that the assumption with more assumptions' assumptions have a higher enough chance of being true compared to the assumption with less assumptions, then ignore occam's razor
that may have been a bit confusing, sorry

>>11689119
They forget the key phrase "when two answers are equally likely." It obviously doesnt work when a more complex answer also has better evidence to support it.

>>11689371
well duh

>>11690634
this

>>11690675
>The moron calling people morons meme
>t.

>>11689149
Yes there is. The key is the word "assumption". Any time you make an assumption you basically take a gamble in your logic. The more times you gamble/the more times your theory needs to rely on guessing instead of facts the more likely it is to be wrong.
Come on anon. It's not that hard.

>>11689362
>he still believes that scientists are looking for "true" reality and not just making and adjusting models
imagine pic related but the two paths end up in the same place. it would be a whole lot better if you took the shorter path since you are probably a burger

too many commas

>>11689134
>>11689119
>>11689174
1. If you have little knowledge and you are on mount stupid, you might think of wrong explanations and wrongly estimate the simplicity of said explanations.
2. If you have infinite knowledge, only one explanation (the right one) will seem correct to you and you won't have to make any assumptions to reach it
3. As your knowledge increases, you will have to make less assumptions for the right explanation and more assumptions for the wrong ones, as your confidence in your explanations approaches their limit
4. It follows that as long as the "rightness" of explanations are convergent, Occams razor will always be correct, if you are above a certain level of knowledge

>>11689119
People usually prefer complex, but pleasant sounding answers.
>>11689149
Bevause it would be foolish to use the more complex one if both give the same result.
C=X+Y is obviously better than c=x*f-3e*8y+25ye-x*(f-1)

>>11689119
Somewhere beween 6 and 999999...

>>11689174
That's a long-winded way of saying you don't know the difference between simplest and best.

>>11694482
teh best is teh shortest and most right. i fucking hate walls of text. im still on the fence as to whether or not that makes me a retard but i dont fucking give a shit, i want high impact information in small packages