flâneur

Leslie's Razors - by Ian Leslie - The Ruffian

ian-leslie.com · 2,128 words · saved by 1 readers

Catch-up service: The Ruffian’s Greatest Hits 2023 Lessons In How Not To Lead Movies as Discourse Generators In philosophy, a “razor” is a rule of thumb or heuristic - a rough and ready way to cut through a problem and choose between competing hypotheses. A razor isn’t an infallible rule, but a principle which gets you to the right answer more often than not. William of Ockham, a fourteenth century English monk and philosopher, is credited with the most famous razor: that the correct solution is probably the simplest one, with the fewest number of moving parts. Razors are themselves methods of simplification. They are useful at the margin, when choosing between answers that are otherwise equally plausible. Observing that a razor isn’t always true (“Sometimes, the correct explanation is the more complicated one!”) is to completely miss the point. The point is that all else being equal, a good razor will usually steer you in the right direction. William of Ockham only had one razor. I ha

William of Ockham, who famously coined the phrase “the best a man can get”. Catch-up service: The Ruffian’s Greatest Hits 2023 Lessons In How Not To Lead Movies as Discourse Generators In philosophy, a “razor” is a rule of thumb or heuristic - a rough and ready way to cut through a problem and choose between competing hypotheses. A razor isn’t an infallible rule, but a principle which gets you to the right answer more often than not. William of Ockham, a fourteenth century English monk and philosopher, is credited with the most famous razor: that the correct solution is probably the…

related reading