--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@...>
wrote:
>
>
> Popper (I forgot where) has a similar proposal: When having to
choose
> between two equally falsifiable theories, take the simplest one.
He
> does not propose a metric for measuring simplicity, except "number
of
> symbols in the written representation of the theory" (this is not
a
> direct quote, but a rendition). Actually (I think) this points in
the
> direction why such a rule is necessary: Representability. The
shorter
> a rule is, the easier it is to represent, also (and especially) in
> your head. Panini (I've only seen one or two of his rules) or any
> other grammarian in pre-literary times must have faced the same
> problem: how to describe the whole grammar of a language as
> succinctly as possible.
Well, would anybody use that rule in a court of law? If you have two
possible killers, both claiming the other guy did it, would you
seriously recommend that the one whose story whitewashing himself is
longer than that of the other guy be regarded as the guilty one and
sentenced? Even worse: If they invent a third person, and A blames
it on "some man", while B gives a detailed description of the
supposed man C including his car and his gun, would you then feel
entitled to conclude that, since the difference in their accounts
shows that they are not both telling the truth, B must be sentenced
because his story is longer?
In this travesty, anyone can see that this is no valid way to get at
the truth. How then can it be good scholarly practice?
In reality the principle (Occam's Razor) holds only for statistics:
If we have a thousand problems and a million suggestions for their
solutions, we are pretty sure to make fewer errors if we
consistently choose thee simplest solution to them all than if we
consistently choose a more complex solution. But we make even fewer
mistakes of course if we investigate the particulars and discard
suggestions that do not fit the additional observations we can make.
The last part has been crucial in the somewhat undignified debate we
have had on the list: A simple solution should not be agreed upon
until there are no more particulars to be taken stock of. Am I the
only one who can see this?
Jens