dudeicus
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shanerg is right, Occam's razor is not "The simplest answer is usually the right one." It is, "do not suggest entities for which there are no need".
That is a common misrepresentation of Occam's razor, and it is extremely vague and I think it shouldn't be used, it has too many hidden assumptions. Now I do agree with everything that was written in the article, but everything in the article was the underlying explanation for why Occam's razor is true, which simply put, has to do with statistics. I was disappointed though, that this article that was about Occam's razor, didn't actually have Occam's razor in it.
Science is just a method of filtering hypothesis. Which is exactly what Occam's razor is. Occam's razor is not a philosophy, it is a statistical prediction. To claim that Occam's razor is not a science would be to claim that statistics is not a science.
Example: You leave a bowl with milk in it over night, you wake up in the morning and its gone. Two possibly theories, are one, your cat drank it, or two, someone broke into your house, and drank it, then left.
Well, we know that cats like milk, and you have a cat, so you know the probability of there being a cat is 1:1, and you also... (read more)
Occam's Razor is "entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity" (entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem)
NOT "The simplest explanation that fits the facts."
Now thats just purely definition. I think both are true. I think there are problems with both. The problem with Occams razor, is that yes its true, however, it doesn't cover all the bases. There is a deeper underlying principle that makes Occams razor true, which is the one you described in the article. However summing up your article as "The simplest explanation that fits the facts" is also misleading as in, while it does seem to cover all the bases, it only does so if you use a very... (read more)