alexflint comments on Occam alternatives - Less Wrong

22 Post author: selylindi 25 January 2012 07:50AM

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Comment author: alexflint 01 February 2012 09:27:36PM 0 points [-]

Occam's razor is the basis for believing that those experiments tell us anything whatsoever about the future. Without it, there is no way to assign the probabilities you mention.

Comment author: selylindi 06 February 2012 09:28:59PM 0 points [-]

Clearly people who don't know about Occam's Razor, and people who explicitly reject it, still believe in the future. Just as clearly, we can use Occam's Razor or other principles in evaluating theories about what happened in the past. Your claim appears wholly unjustified. Was it just a vague hifalutin' metaphysical claim, or are there some underlying points that you're not bringing out?

Comment author: alexflint 08 February 2012 10:41:00PM 0 points [-]

People who don't know about Newtonian mechanics still believe that rocks fall downwards, but people who reject it explicitly will have a harder time reconciling their beliefs with the continued falling of rocks. It would be a mistake to reject Newtonian mechanics, then say "people who reject Newtonian mechanics clearly still believe that rocks fall", then to conclude that there is no problem in rejecting Newtonian mechanics. Similarly, if you reject Occam's razor then you need to replace it with something that actually fills the explanatory gap -- it's not good enough to say "well people who reject Occam's razor clearly still believe Occam's razor", and then just carry right on.