TheOtherDave comments on Where Recursive Justification Hits Bottom - Less Wrong

41 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 08 July 2008 10:16AM

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Comment author: Yosarian2 31 December 2012 06:55:32PM 4 points [-]

Well, if you wanted to actually test Occam's razor in a scientific way, you would have to test it against an alternate hypothesis and see which one gave better predictions, wouldn't you?

So how about this as an alternate hypothesis:

"Occam's Razor has no objective truth value; there is no fundamental reason that the truth is more likely to be a simpler explanation. It only SEEMS like Occam's Razor is true because it is exponentially harder to find a valid explanation in a larger truth-space, so usually when we do manage to find a valid explanation for something, it is a simple explanation. But that is merely a question of the map, and of finding a specific spot on the map, not of the territory itself."

What kind of experiment would you set up to differentiate that possibility from Occam's Razor being correct?

Comment author: TheOtherDave 31 December 2012 09:06:26PM 0 points [-]

Can you summarize the articulation of Occam's Razor that this conflicts with? Because I don't normally think of OR as asserting anything about fundamental reasons, merely about reliable strategies... and your hypothesis agrees about reliable strategies.