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TheOtherDave comments on Where Recursive Justification Hits Bottom - Less Wrong
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Sorry, I still don't get it.
Suppose we somehow do this study, and we find that N% of the time the "simplest possible fit given the known facts" is true, and (1-N)% of the time it isn't. For what range of Ns would you conclude that Occam's Razor is correct, and for what range of Ns would you conclude that your alternative hypothesis is instead correct?
I will admit that I'm struggling a bit here, because I'm having trouble coming up with a coherent mental picture of what a legitimate alternate hypothesis to Occam's razor would actually look like.
In fact, if you take my hypothesis to be true, then Occam's razor would still fundamentally hold, at least in the simplest form of "a less complicated theory is more likely to be true then a more complicated", since if "theory-space A" is smaller then "theory-space B", then any given point in theory-space A is more likely to be true then any given point in theory-space B even if the answer has an equal chance of being in space A as it does of being in space B. So I think my original hypothesis actually itself reduces to Occam's Razor.
I think this is where I just say oops and drop this whole train of thought.
Yeah, that's what I think too.
Presumably, what I'd expect to see if Occam's Razor is an unreliable guideline is that when I'm choosing between two explanations, one of which is more complex for a consistent and coherent definition of complexity, it turns out that simpler explanation is often incorrect.