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Slider comments on Is simplicity truth indicative? - Less Wrong Discussion
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If you have information that simplicity works good in the field of application then the success should be attributed to this information rather than simplicity per se. There are no free lunches and the prior information about the fittness of simple theories is your toll for being able to occam your way forward.
The point is that two theories of incomparable theory branches can't be ordered with occam but one being an elaboration of another (ie up or down the same branch) can. Other uses are better understood as unrelated to this idea but still falsely attributed to it.
Why? Is this really just an attempt to emphasize that in some domains insisting on simplicity may be counterproductive? While that's true theoretically, I feel like such domains are highly rare in practice, and most people are not overdemanding of simplicity. Thus such an argument feels more like an attempt to carve out in theoretical space a highly applicable get-out-of-jail-free card than an attempt to guide arguments closer to truth.
It comes form being able to tell which part of the success is because of your method and which part is the data that you fed to your method. There was a big listing of domain knowledge assumptions and this seems like a one of the first things to assume about a domain. When one knows the difference between knowledge and assumtions it isn't that hard to take simplicity preference as an assumption instead of fact ie the proper attribution doesn't really increase ones cognitive workload.
It can be okay to guess that simplicity works good (especially when one knows that the odds are good) but then you are not knowing.