✳flâneur — a map of the web's best reading

Occam’s Razor

readthesequences.com · 1,414 words · saved by 1 readers

The more complex an explanation is, the more evidence you need just to find it in belief-space. (In Traditional Rationality this is often phrased misleadingly, as “The more complex a proposition is, the more evidence is required to argue for it.”) How can we measure the complexity of an explanation? How can we determine how much evidence is required? Occam’s Razor is often phrased as “The simplest explanation that fits the facts.” Robert Heinlein replied that the simplest explanation is “The lady down the street is a witch; she did it.” One observes that the length of an English sentence is not a good way to measure “complexity.” And “fitting” the facts by merely failing to prohibit them is insufficient. Why, exactly, is the length of an English sentence a poor measure of complexity? Because when you speak a sentence aloud, you are using labels for concepts that the listener shares—the receiver has already stored the complexity in them. Suppose we abbreviated Heinlein’s whole sentence

Occam’s Razor Source Markdown · Talk Home About Search Contents Occam’s Razor ❦ The more complex an explanation is, the more evidence you need just to find it in belief-space. (In Traditional Rationality this is often phrased misleadingly , as “The more complex a proposition is, the more evidence is required to argue for it.”) How can we measure the complexity of an explanation? How can we determine how much evidence is required? Occam’s Razor is often phrased as “The simplest explanation that fits the facts.” Robert Heinlein replied that the simplest explanation is “The lady down the street i

Explore this link on the map →

saved by

related reading