I agree that jwhendy should be proud of himself, but "You deserve to achieve your goals" and "You will achieve your goals" are probably not related. Don't assume that this will turn out great with everyone receiving the document crying and hugging and saying how they'll always love you no matter what. The world doesn't work that way, and being prepared for that is more important than praising the (admitted) inspiration and beauty of this piece.

Just to clarify something: I would expect most readers here would interpret "logically valid" to mean something very specific - essentially something is logically valid if it can't possibly be wrong, under any interpretation of the words (except for words regarded as logical connectives). Self-consistency is a much weaker condition than validity.

Also, Occam's razor is about more than just conjunction. Conjunction says that "XY" has a higher probability than "XYZ"; Occam's razor says that (in the absence of other evidence), "XY" has a higher probability than "ABCDEFG".

In what sense Occam's razor "logically valid"?

That's inspiring, and beautiful. You should be very, very proud of your rationality, adherance to the Socratic method, and your determination to create and maintain a happy marriage and beautiful life. I know you will achieve your goals. You deserve to.

Sure, I'll read it. Just tell me how to find it!

The problem is that philosophers also make poor philosophers.

Less snarkily, "logical inference" is overrated. It does wonders in mathematics, but rarely does scientific data logically require a particular conclusion.

This, I think, is just one symptom of a more general problem with scientists: they don't emphasize rigorous logic as much as they should. Science, after all, is not only about (a) observation but about (b) making logical inferences from observation. Scientists need to take (b) far more seriously (not that all don't, but many do not). You've heard the old saying "Scientists make poor philosophers." It's true (or at least, true more often than it should be). That has to change. Scientists ought to be amongst the best philosophers in the world, precisely because they ought to be masters of logic.

I downvoted everyone who suggested that we call people who have not yet been exposed to rationality: "ignoramuses", "stupid", "ignorant", or the like.

I would like to grow the LessWrong community, and calling everyone who isn't already one of us names, is not the way to do it. Also, I find it offensive, and would like to see less comments like these.

Let's cut the crap and simply call people who "aren't rational because they haven't been exposed to the right ideas yet" what they really are: ignoramuses. Perhaps that's too harsh, though. BTW, I need Karma in order to be able to post here, and I'd like to post, so please give karma. You won't be disappointed.

It seems to me that the correct reasoning behind Occam's razor is that the more assumptions that a hypothesis must make the lower the prior probability must be. Likewise, the more specific a hypothesis is, the lower the prior probability. For example, the prior probability that "a red F150 will pass by my house within the next five minutes" is lower than the prior probability that "a motor vehicle of some sort will pass by my house within the next five minutes" for reasons that I think are fairly self-explanatory.