Also note that it’s not an inviolable law. It doesn’t actually prove any particular position. It’s just a principle to guide your thinking and nothing more.
Say your car breaks down. The idea that it’s a mechanical failure is more Occam-friendly than the idea that your car was sabotaged which then caused the mechanical failure which caused your car to break down.
Note that as we add in that additional assumption, we reduce the likelihood of the second idea being true compared to the first idea. That’s just a function of adding assumptions. You could add an assumption that a person who had been threatening you was the person who sabotaged your car and it becomes less likely again, all things being equal.
All that this illustrates is that the more specific something is, the less generally applicable it is. Astonishing, right?
One of my favourite ways to really stump these dorks is by asking them which assertion is true according to Occam’s razor (itself false due to my point above and putting it in these terms is a low-key flex because a person who knows what they’re talking about would object to the framing of the assertion but that forever seems to be lost on these fools):
That God created the universe
The sum total of all of astrophysics, with every single claim therein, is how the universe was created
Obviously the simplest argument is always inherently the truest and most accurate argument every time, right?
You can drag the conversation down into the weeds by defending the first argument since it still makes fewer claims even when you add in extra points like the fact that god has always existed and is all powerful etc.; there’s basically no way of arguing that the explanation that astrophysics provides us for how the universe was created is simpler than the argument that God did it.
Of course this type of person is most likely to be an atheist edgelord, or at least a reformed edgelord, so this sort of argument is very likely to rile them up. And of course you can cut through this argument by stating that the number of assumptions that astrophysics makes is fewer but, again, that requires the other person to know what they’re talking about.
No, thank you, you put it far better than I did. I thought about bringing up the God argument (as I think that was one of the guy’s original points with this idea) but forgot. Like any logic tool, someone trying to use this argument to “win” a debate has already lost, the use of these sorts of tools is always to examine and refine your own arguments and own understanding of something, not to “win debates” with a gotcha.
Hey I’m not super strong on rhetorics and I’m kinda curious about the flaw in your argument. Would you mind explaining what the issue with your “god made the earth, or all of astrophysics did” supposition is?
Is it just that there’s a lot of hidden assumptions in the god bit and a lot of proven assumptions in the astrophysics bit?
Thank. You.
Also note that it’s not an inviolable law. It doesn’t actually prove any particular position. It’s just a principle to guide your thinking and nothing more.
Say your car breaks down. The idea that it’s a mechanical failure is more Occam-friendly than the idea that your car was sabotaged which then caused the mechanical failure which caused your car to break down.
Note that as we add in that additional assumption, we reduce the likelihood of the second idea being true compared to the first idea. That’s just a function of adding assumptions. You could add an assumption that a person who had been threatening you was the person who sabotaged your car and it becomes less likely again, all things being equal.
All that this illustrates is that the more specific something is, the less generally applicable it is. Astonishing, right?
One of my favourite ways to really stump these dorks is by asking them which assertion is true according to Occam’s razor (itself false due to my point above and putting it in these terms is a low-key flex because a person who knows what they’re talking about would object to the framing of the assertion but that forever seems to be lost on these fools):
That God created the universe
The sum total of all of astrophysics, with every single claim therein, is how the universe was created
Obviously the simplest argument is always inherently the truest and most accurate argument every time, right?
You can drag the conversation down into the weeds by defending the first argument since it still makes fewer claims even when you add in extra points like the fact that god has always existed and is all powerful etc.; there’s basically no way of arguing that the explanation that astrophysics provides us for how the universe was created is simpler than the argument that God did it.
Of course this type of person is most likely to be an atheist edgelord, or at least a reformed edgelord, so this sort of argument is very likely to rile them up. And of course you can cut through this argument by stating that the number of assumptions that astrophysics makes is fewer but, again, that requires the other person to know what they’re talking about.
No, thank you, you put it far better than I did. I thought about bringing up the God argument (as I think that was one of the guy’s original points with this idea) but forgot. Like any logic tool, someone trying to use this argument to “win” a debate has already lost, the use of these sorts of tools is always to examine and refine your own arguments and own understanding of something, not to “win debates” with a gotcha.
Hey I’m not super strong on rhetorics and I’m kinda curious about the flaw in your argument. Would you mind explaining what the issue with your “god made the earth, or all of astrophysics did” supposition is?
Is it just that there’s a lot of hidden assumptions in the god bit and a lot of proven assumptions in the astrophysics bit?
I think “God did it” is a straight up simpler explanation no matter how you slice it. The problem is with the incorrect application of Occam’s razor.