All of Nicholas_Covington's Comments + Replies

Well, of course things may not work out exactly like an Oprah special. But I think that even if there is anger/bitterness/backlash at first, things will, in time, work out and his family will accept him, provided he handles the situation with care (which I predict he will) and provided that his family is composed of people who are somewhere in the vicinity of reasonableness. They may not be. But permanent disownment by a family for purely religious reasons is rare, in my experience. Don't get me wrong: it happens. But as someone who grew up and lives in the bible belt, it is not common.

Hi Giles,

I think Occam's razor is logically valid in the sense that, although it doesn't always provide the correct answer, it is certain that it will probably provide the correct answer. Also, I'm not sure if I understand your point about conjunction. I've always understood "do not multiply entities beyond necessity" to mean that, all else held equal, you ought to make the fewest number of conjectures/assumptions/hypotheses possible.

Well, it is not self-contradictory, for one thing. For another thing, every time a new postulate or assumption is added to a theory we are necessarily lowering the prior probability because that postulate/assumption always has some chance of being wrong.

2Giles
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".

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.

1jwhendy
Thanks for the comment. Similar to atorm, I did think it was perhaps a bit over the top in terms of its optimism, but I appreciate the gesture.
6atorm
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.

Well, of course one cannot logically and absolutely deduce much from raw data. But with some logically valid inferential tools in our hands (Occam's razor, Bayes' Theorem, Induction) we can probabilistically derive conclusions.

3Eugine_Nier
In what sense Occam's razor "logically valid"?

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.

0ricketson
Saying that people should be better is not helpful. Like all people, scientists have limited time and need to choose how to allocate their efforts. Sometimes more observations can solve a problem, and sometimes more careful thinking is necessary. The appropriate allocation depends on the situation and the talents of the researcher in question. That being said, there may be a dysfunctional bias in how funding is allocated -- creating a "all or none" environment where the best strategy for maintaining a basic research program (paying for one's own salary plus a couple of students) is to be the type of researcher who gets multi-million dollar grants and uses that money to generate gargantuan new datasets, which can then provide the foundation for a sensational publication that everyone notices.
8ChrisHallquist
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.
5A1987dM
The problem is that the connotations of philosophy (in my mind at least) are more like how-many-angels mindwanking than like On the electrodynamics of moving bodies. (This is likely the effect of studying pre-20th-century philosophers for five years in high school.)
2daenerys
On top of Eugine_Nier said, I would add that when your second post on a site is standing at -10 karma, then you should probably update on your comment being more offensive than funny, rather than just assuming that no one else has a sense of humor.
4Eugine_Nier
Useful advise: on the internet no one can tell when you're trying to be sarcastic.

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.