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Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name

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Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.

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Speaker 1: Time to go into the vault for a classic episode

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Speaker 1: of the show. This one originally published on February and

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Speaker 1: it's about Acam's Razor. Yeah, this one, this one is

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Speaker 1: a lot of fun we get into. You know, we

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Speaker 1: discussed scientific thinking and speculative thinking. Uh, we discussed the

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Speaker 1: name of the rose a little bit for obvious reasons

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Speaker 1: that this one was fun. There's some some history, some science.

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Speaker 1: Everything you want. Dr wonderful. Welcome to Stuff to Blow

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Speaker 1: your Mind, a production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Work. Hey,

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Speaker 1: welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is

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Speaker 1: Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And today we're going

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Speaker 1: to discuss a problem solving principles that many of you

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Speaker 1: have probably heard of and that we've we've definitely referenced

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Speaker 1: on the show before, and that is Acom's Razor. That's right,

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Speaker 1: it's it's one of the classics, one of the hits

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Speaker 1: of like the Skeptical tool Kit, and uh, I think

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Speaker 1: it's a really good one to get into because it's

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Speaker 1: something that is widely known, but in different ways and

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Speaker 1: often uh. To whatever extent it actually does have value,

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Speaker 1: it often gets deployed in ways that do not actually

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Speaker 1: make use of its value, right, Like like an actual

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Speaker 1: razor blade may be misused from time to time. Now,

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Speaker 1: one specific place that I know we've talked about it

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Speaker 1: before is that is in the context of Carl Sagan's

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Speaker 1: recommendations for the tools of skeptical thinking. Uh. He lays

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Speaker 1: these out, and one of them is Occam's razor. He writes,

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Speaker 1: Occam's razor. This convenient rule of thumb urges us, when

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Speaker 1: faced with two hypotheses that explain the data equally well,

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Speaker 1: to choose the simpler. Okay, Now, why do we end

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Speaker 1: up talking about this today. We were in the studio

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Speaker 1: the other day, uh, discussing upcoming episodes, and you said

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Speaker 1: that Seth mentioned this, our our producer, Seth. Yeah. I

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Speaker 1: was in here and Seth Nicholas Johnson was working on

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Speaker 1: a crossword puzzle. Was it the New York Times? He

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Speaker 1: tells us it was The New York Times? Uh, And

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Speaker 1: he he asked me how to spell okam is an

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Speaker 1: Ockham's razor? And I took a guess. At it and

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Speaker 1: I can't. I can't remember I was correct. I was

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Speaker 1: probably wrong, but also probably hit one of the multiple

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Speaker 1: acceptable spellings for Ockhams raiser um. But anyway, we started

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Speaker 1: talking about it and I was like, oh, yeah, we

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Speaker 1: could do that as an episode, and so here we are.

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Speaker 1: I'm very glad we picked this because I think one

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Speaker 1: of my personal favorite genres of critical thinking is is

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Speaker 1: being skeptical about the tools of skepticism. You know, is

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Speaker 1: sometimes people who identify as skeptics can can I get

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Speaker 1: a little cocky? You know, they get a little too

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Speaker 1: sure of themselves about what the reasoning tools they use,

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Speaker 1: and it's worth putting those tools to the test, giving

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Speaker 1: them a closer look. Yeah. Absolutely, Now I have to

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Speaker 1: say that I definitely remember the first time I encountered

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Speaker 1: the concept of Ockham's raz or, at least the first

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Speaker 1: time I encounter unded it, and it on some level

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Speaker 1: stuck with me. And that was when I view the

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Speaker 1: film adaptation of Carl Sagan's novel Contact. The movie I

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Speaker 1: can't watch without crying. Oh yeah, yeah, well why does

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Speaker 1: it make you cry? Oh God, there's no no, It's

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Speaker 1: just it's pointed, like especially the first part where you know,

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Speaker 1: it zooms out from the earth and you're hearing the

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Speaker 1: radio signals go back in time, and then and then

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Speaker 1: it shows the young Ellie air Away experimenting with the

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Speaker 1: ham radio and her dad's helping her, and I get

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Speaker 1: so emotional. I don't know, yeah, yeah, it's it's been

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Speaker 1: a very long I haven't seen it since it initially

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Speaker 1: came out, And in fact, the main thing I remember

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Speaker 1: from it is this scene in which Jodie Foster's character

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Speaker 1: Eleanor air Away has having this conversation with Matthew McConaughey's character.

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Speaker 1: Who how old was Matthew McConaughey at this point, I

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Speaker 1: don't even know how old he is now he's just

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Speaker 1: like this ageless demon. But anyway, he has his character,

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Speaker 1: he's playing his character named Palmer Joss. Uh huh. And

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Speaker 1: in the scene in question, Foster's character brings up Acam's

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Speaker 1: raiser in a discussion on the nature of God. She

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Speaker 1: she says, well, which is ultimately the simpler hypothesis than

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Speaker 1: an all powerful God exists or the human beings made

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Speaker 1: God up in order to feel better about things, and

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Speaker 1: then this ultimately comes back around is kind of flipped

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Speaker 1: on her later on in the film regarding her characters

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Speaker 1: encounter with an extraterrestrial intelligence. Right, is it more likely

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Speaker 1: that she really had the experience she thinks she had

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Speaker 1: with with all these aliens or that she like hallucinated

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Speaker 1: something that would give her emotional closure. Yeah, and so yeah,

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Speaker 1: I think I was in high school at the time,

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Speaker 1: so it was It was an interesting concept, especially in

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Speaker 1: the context of atheism versus you know, faith in a

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Speaker 1: creator deity. Uh. To to suddenly have this tool from

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Speaker 1: the chest of skeptical thinking just thrown up on the

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Speaker 1: table and you and seemingly used by both sides. Well, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I think this is funny. This is a great example

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Speaker 1: because it highlights some of the most common features of

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Speaker 1: Occam's razor as it is actually used, Like it's often

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Speaker 1: invoked in a kind of fuzzy way, like without an

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Speaker 1: objective measure, uh, just kind of invoked to back up

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Speaker 1: your intuitions about the probability of something. Right. But another

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Speaker 1: thing is that this example shows how it's not always

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Speaker 1: easy to find a way to compare the simplicity of

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Speaker 1: two different propositions, like is the existence of God a

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Speaker 1: simple hypothesis or a complicated one that I think that

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Speaker 1: really depends on kind of how you feel about it,

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Speaker 1: like like what kind of objective measure can you come

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Speaker 1: up with to evaluate that question? Right, It's going to

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Speaker 1: depend so much on your like your background, your culture,

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Speaker 1: what you grew up with, and just how you how

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Speaker 1: you've come to view the possibility of of of God's existence.

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Speaker 1: Is it just kind of the bedrock of your your

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Speaker 1: worldview or is it this thing from the outside that

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Speaker 1: you are contemplating. And also how do you view it,

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Speaker 1: like the coherence of the idea. Do you view it

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Speaker 1: as something that's like, uh, that's full of all these

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Speaker 1: little kind of ad hoc accommodations, or something that is

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Speaker 1: a holistic, coherent sort of like fact about nature, you know,

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Speaker 1: it's I think this is a perfect example that shows

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Speaker 1: like when people use the idea of Okham's razor in

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Speaker 1: a way that is not helpful and doesn't really it

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Speaker 1: doesn't really get you any closer to figuring out what's true.

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Speaker 1: Now if you're one, If if you're still questioning like

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Speaker 1: what the concept really means, don't worry. We will get

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Speaker 1: to some I think some some very understandable examples of

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Speaker 1: how it can be used properly and used improperly. But

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Speaker 1: let's go ahead and to start about the concept itself

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Speaker 1: the word acum uh. And you know where this comes from.

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Speaker 1: We'll get to the origins of akamas razor. So Acam's

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Speaker 1: razor is also known as the principle of parsimony, and

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Speaker 1: parsimony means a tendency toward cheapness or frugality. So I

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Speaker 1: like that. It's like the principle of parsimony is like,

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Speaker 1: you want to be cheap with your with your logic, right, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I don't need more than two steps of logic between

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Speaker 1: me and the solution. Uh. You know, don't give me

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Speaker 1: one with four or five uh. And it was named

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Speaker 1: after the medieval English philosopher William of Ockham, of course,

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Speaker 1: William of Ockom Uh. So he he lived in the

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Speaker 1: thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, from twelve eighty five to either

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Speaker 1: thirteen forty seven or thirteen forty nine. I've seen different

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Speaker 1: death dates given for him. I've seen different birthdates as well.

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Speaker 1: At twelve eighty seven or twelve eighty eight, That's what

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Speaker 1: I was looking at. That's interesting. So he was a

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Speaker 1: prolific scholar Franciscan friar. We'll get more into his ideas

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Speaker 1: in a minute. You know, one thing I've always wondered

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Speaker 1: is where the heck is Ocum. I've never heard of that. Well, yeah,

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Speaker 1: because the words sound it has kind of like a

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Speaker 1: remoteness to it. It sounds alien in some ways. Akom

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Speaker 1: is very much a real place. It is a rural

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Speaker 1: village in Surrey, England. You can look it up online.

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Speaker 1: You can find out the website for the church in Ocum,

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Speaker 1: for example. And this area has been occupied since ancient times.

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Speaker 1: It's about a day's ride south best of London, and

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Speaker 1: it was the birthplace of the individual who had come

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Speaker 1: to be known as William of Ockham. Now beyond that,

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Speaker 1: beyond the fact that he was born here, we don't

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Speaker 1: know a lot about William's life. Uh. We don't know

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Speaker 1: what his social or family background was, or if his

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Speaker 1: native language was French or Middle English. As Paul Vincent

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Speaker 1: Spade explains in The Cambridge Companion to Ockham, he was

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Speaker 1: likely given over to the Franciscan Order as a young

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Speaker 1: boy before the age of fourteen, and here Latin would

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Speaker 1: have quickly become his language of of of not only writing,

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Speaker 1: but also just conversation. Gray Friar's convent in London was

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Speaker 1: likely his home convent, but later he traveled. He visited Avignon,

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Speaker 1: he visited Italy, and he lived the last two decades

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Speaker 1: of his life in Germany. Now, philosophically, William was a nominalist,

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Speaker 1: and Spade writes that the two main themes of this

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Speaker 1: for William were the rejection of universals and ontological reduction.

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Speaker 1: And these two themes are are not necessarily interconnected, like

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Speaker 1: you can you could, you could believe in one but

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Speaker 1: not the other, you know, and vice versa um. But

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Speaker 1: basically let's let's get into what these means. So the first,

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Speaker 1: the rejection of universals is perhaps best considered, and this

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Speaker 1: is very brief and broad. Certainly you can find so

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Speaker 1: much written and set on this topic, but basically, think

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Speaker 1: of it as a rejection of the Platonic idea of

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Speaker 1: the realm of forms. So that idea that all chairs

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Speaker 1: that we might make, the whom I design and carve

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Speaker 1: and a symbol are an attempt to create the perfect chair,

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Speaker 1: which doesn't reside in our world, but only resides within

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Speaker 1: this realm of forms. So all chairs that we create

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Speaker 1: are like an aspiration for the ideal chair. Another way

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Speaker 1: I've thought about it, at least as I understood it,

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Speaker 1: was that nominalism is kind of the idea that there

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Speaker 1: is no such thing as a chair. There's only this

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Speaker 1: chair and that chair and this chair over here. There

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Speaker 1: is no chair right like this. This is the kind

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Speaker 1: of the situation one gets it too when you get

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Speaker 1: into like the genre classifications of say albums, artists or

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Speaker 1: movies that you care a great deal about, and someone

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Speaker 1: tries to limit it to a classification and say, oh, well,

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Speaker 1: that's classic rock or that's alternative rock, and you're like, no, no,

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Speaker 1: no, no no, no, you don't. Don't try and fit that.

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Speaker 1: There is there is. These categories do not apply. There

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Speaker 1: is There is only you know, whatever your band of

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Speaker 1: choice happens to be. That, there is only tool, There

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Speaker 1: is only primus or whatever. Right there, Yeah, there there

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Speaker 1: is only things, not categories. Now let's move on to

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Speaker 1: the second theme here, ontological reduction. This is, as Britannica

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Speaker 1: defines it, quote, the metaphysical doctrine that entities of a

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Speaker 1: certain kind are, in reality collections or combinations of entities

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Speaker 1: of simpler or more basic kind. I think your classic

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Speaker 1: example here is molecules atoms. Yeah. So another example here's

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Speaker 1: while our Aristotle defined ten categories of objects that might

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Speaker 1: be apprehended by a human mind, and these would have

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Speaker 1: been uh translations, very on on how you wanted to

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Speaker 1: find these. But substance, quantity, quality, relative place, time, attitude, condition, action,

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Speaker 1: and affection. William cut these down to two substance and quality.

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Speaker 1: He's really getting in there. That's the razor. That's what

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Speaker 1: a razor does. It just it slices away, It cuts

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Speaker 1: off the fat and gets down to the meat. Spade writes, quote.

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Speaker 1: Although these two strands of Acam's thinking are independent, they

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Speaker 1: are nevertheless often viewed as joint effects of a more

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Speaker 1: fundamental concern, the principle of parsimony, known as Acam's razor. Okay,

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Speaker 1: so we're getting to the razor here. Yeah. So William

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Speaker 1: devoted a lot of energy to arguing against what Spade

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Speaker 1: calls the bloated ontological inventories of his contemporaries, and he

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Speaker 1: became well known to his peers for this as such,

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Speaker 1: either towards the end of his life or shortly after

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Speaker 1: his death, a kind of Greatest Hits album came out

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Speaker 1: on his Thoughts and Ideas titled on the Principles of Theology.

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Speaker 1: Now it wasn't actually by William of Ockham, but it

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Speaker 1: featured his doctrine as well as verbatim quotes. There was

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Speaker 1: no ascribed author either, so later generations would often just

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Speaker 1: attribute it to him um as well as the notion

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Speaker 1: of Akham's razor. Uh. However, this specific phrase was apparently

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Speaker 1: never actually used by him. He never said Ackham in

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Speaker 1: the house, I'm going to get the razor out and

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Speaker 1: start carving on some uh some some some some ideas here. No,

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Speaker 1: this is something that is attributed by others to his work. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: Okham's razor is a is a name for this principle

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Speaker 1: that is supposed to be kind of a summation of

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Speaker 1: several different thoughts he articulated in different ways. Yes, yeah,

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Speaker 1: he summed it up in different different manners. Uh. In

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Speaker 1: Spade includes includes a few examples of this in his work.

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Speaker 1: For instance, here, here's some quotes from Akam. Beings are

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Speaker 1: not to be multiplied beyond necessity or plurality, is not

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Speaker 1: to be a positive without necessity or what can happen

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Speaker 1: through fewer principles happens in Vain through more and there

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Speaker 1: are other there are other examples of this as well.

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Speaker 1: We're basically saying the same thing, but maybe like it

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Speaker 1: just comes off a little flower at least in translations. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I think the the simple version you could get to

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Speaker 1: the summarizing some of his abuse here, like, uh, don't

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Speaker 1: make assumptions you don't have to, don't pile on explanations

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Speaker 1: that are not necessary. Yeah, and also just don't take

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Speaker 1: more steps they are necessary to get from point A

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Speaker 1: to point B than your reasoning and in your hypothesis.

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Speaker 1: And the way this usually gets translated into modern thinking,

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Speaker 1: as we've talked about before, is that when you've got

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Speaker 1: competing explanations, it's better to tend towards the simpler one,

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Speaker 1: the one that makes fewer assumptions, rather than the more

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Speaker 1: complicated one that makes more assumptions. Now here's another fun

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Speaker 1: fact about William of Aucham. William Ackom is key to

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Speaker 1: Elmberto Echo's excellent novel The Name of the Rose. Uh.

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Speaker 1: This was a novel that was published in nineteen eighty.

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Speaker 1: Many of you may be familiar with the certainly the

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Speaker 1: the film adaptation that starred Sean Connery, f Murray, Abraham Um,

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Speaker 1: Christian Slater in a host of wonderful character actors. And

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Speaker 1: then there was there's a more recent mini series adaptation

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Speaker 1: with John Taturo that I have not seen, but I

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Speaker 1: should probably see at some point or another. But anyway,

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Speaker 1: the main character in Echoes novel is William of Baskerville,

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Speaker 1: who is in many ways similar. He's a Franciscan friar.

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Speaker 1: He's got a kind of empirical streak. Yeah, he's basically

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Speaker 1: a mash up of William of Ockam and Sherlock Holmes,

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Speaker 1: thus the Baskerville alluding to uh Hound of the Baskerville's.

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Speaker 1: Then the title itself, the Name of the Rose, has

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Speaker 1: has been interpreted as being a reference to Acom's uh nominalism.

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Speaker 1: There is no one rose. There is only the Name

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Speaker 1: of the Rose. But they're also other I think interpretations

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Speaker 1: on it, and it's meant to be kind of cryptic.

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Speaker 1: Now according to I was reading more about this, and

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Speaker 1: it's been been a little while since I've read In

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Speaker 1: the Name of the Rose, you've read it more recently

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Speaker 1: than yes, Because we were misremembering. We were thinking, now

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Speaker 1: was it was? Was it the case? In the book

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Speaker 1: that William of Ockham was supposed to be this fictional

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Speaker 1: main character's mentor. I somehow had that in my mind

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Speaker 1: as well. No, instead it was another medieval scholastic thinker.

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Speaker 1: It was Roger Bacon. So so yes, Roger Bacon was

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Speaker 1: William of Baskerville's mentor, as opposed to William of Acham,

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Speaker 1: who I do not believe as Ackam is actually mentioned

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Speaker 1: in the novel. So I was reading a little bit

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Speaker 1: more about this. There was a two thousand eighteen article

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Speaker 1: that came out in Philosophy Now by Carol Nicholson titled

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Speaker 1: Acam's Rose, and she pointed out that Echo had apparently

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Speaker 1: explored the possibility of simply using Ackam as his main

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Speaker 1: character in in this novel, but he ultimately quote did

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Speaker 1: not find him a very attractive person. And therefore, I mean,

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Speaker 1: did that makes sense right? If you're it's like, you

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Speaker 1: can either lean on a historical figure, or he can

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Speaker 1: do something a little more fun and do a mash

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Speaker 1: up of ACoM and the Great Detective And ultimately, I mean,

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Speaker 1: that's one of the fun things about the novel is

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Speaker 1: that is that you do have these elements where it's

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Speaker 1: a it's Sherlock Holmes going up against bores, you know,

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Speaker 1: that kind of sort of thing. She writes, Uh, this

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Speaker 1: is interesting as well, just to draw the parallel between

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Speaker 1: William of Baskerville and William of of Olcom. She writes,

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Speaker 1: quote in thirty seven, the year in which the name

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Speaker 1: of the Roses set, ACoM faced fifty six charges of

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Speaker 1: heresy and was excommunicated after escaping the protection of Emperor

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Speaker 1: Louis of Bavaria. This put an end to his academic career,

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Speaker 1: and he spent the rest of his life as a

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Speaker 1: political activists, advocating freedom of speech, the separation of church

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Speaker 1: and state, and arguing against the infallibility of the pope.

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Speaker 1: She also points out that Ackom, like the fictional William

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Speaker 1: of Baskerville, likely died of the plague. Alright, on that note,

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Speaker 1: we're going to take a quick break, but when we

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Speaker 1: come back we will continue our discussion of Acams razor.

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Speaker 1: Thank alright, we're back, all right. So we've been talking

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Speaker 1: about this principle known as Akam's razor that we've described

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Speaker 1: already as the idea that simpler hypotheses are better than

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Speaker 1: more complex hypotheses. There are a number of ways you

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Speaker 1: can formulate it. But it's a principle that's been referred

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Speaker 1: back to actually since probably before William of Akam. It is,

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Speaker 1: I think, a principle that somewhat predates him in intellectual history,

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Speaker 1: right right, He did not. He did not create something

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Speaker 1: that was not already utilized by other thinkers of the

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Speaker 1: day and thinkers before him. One great example of somebody

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Speaker 1: not before William of Acham but later articulating similar ideas

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Speaker 1: is Isaac Newton in his great work The Principia Mathematica.

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Speaker 1: From Newton writes, quote, we are to admit no more

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Speaker 1: causes of natural things than such as are both true

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Speaker 1: and sufficient to explain their appearances. Uh So, a similar

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Speaker 1: idea is there's no need to add extra explanations when

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Speaker 1: you already have an explanation that is number one true

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Speaker 1: and number two explains everything you see. Right. So, an

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Speaker 1: example of this might be why do the planets orbit

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Speaker 1: the Sun? This would be something that Newton would be

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Speaker 1: concerned with. Newton would say, okay, we know of two

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Speaker 1: forces that explain what we see, gravity and inertia. Inertia

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Speaker 1: is the tendency of an object in motion to stay

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Speaker 1: in motion. Gravity is the mutually attracting force between two

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Speaker 1: objects with mass. So, because of inertia, the planets flying

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Speaker 1: through space want to keep traveling in a straight line

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Speaker 1: at a constant speed. And because of gravity, instead of

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Speaker 1: traveling in a straight line, their path bends around towards

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Speaker 1: the Sun as they travel. And so that those two

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Speaker 1: things are both true, and they explain everything we observed,

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Speaker 1: not now, actually not quite everything, but they were good

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Speaker 1: enough for Newton's time explaining everything. You might also say, though,

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Speaker 1: that maybe in addition to gravi d and inertia, there

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Speaker 1: are angels that guide the planets in their orbits because

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Speaker 1: those elliptical pathways are pleasing to the Lord. But if

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Speaker 1: somebody proposes that, you're you're kind of stuck. Because there's

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Speaker 1: no way to prove the angel hypothesis wrong. You can't

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Speaker 1: say there aren't invisible angels guiding the planets. But pretty

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Speaker 1: much everybody today, I think, even people who believe in

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Speaker 1: angels in some sense, would not see any reason to

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Speaker 1: believe that there are angels doing that, because there are

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Speaker 1: other explanations which do all the explaining that needs to

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Speaker 1: be done. Right, Yeah, I mean, once you drag angels

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Speaker 1: into it too, it it opens up the door for

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Speaker 1: just a never ending list of reasons why the angels

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Speaker 1: can't be detected or why the you know, well, why

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Speaker 1: the angel wanted why the planet seems to be behaving

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Speaker 1: this way. It's in accordance with these known laws rather

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Speaker 1: than the machinations of a divine being right, And you

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Speaker 1: don't need to appeal in any way to the additional

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Speaker 1: plausibility of angels or not. Like the reason I said

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Speaker 1: that even people who otherwise believe in angels don't say

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Speaker 1: that they're guiding the motions of the planets is you

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Speaker 1: don't need them to explain that. And you've just got

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Speaker 1: basic laws of physics that explain what the planets are doing.

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Speaker 1: There's no reason to add an angel's explanation. It doesn't

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Speaker 1: do anymore work. Yeah, it doesn't even help angels out.

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Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, it's there. There's just no point in

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Speaker 1: it now. Of course, sticking on the theory of like

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Speaker 1: the motions of the planets for a minute, of course,

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Speaker 1: we would have to later come up with a more

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Speaker 1: refined theory of gravity for those rare cases where Newton's

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Speaker 1: theory of gravity would fail, And we would get that

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Speaker 1: with Einstein and general relativity, which recharacterized gravity is the

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Speaker 1: curvature of space time caused by deformation due to mass,

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Speaker 1: rather than as a mutually attractive force between objects, though

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Speaker 1: in most cases if you think of it as a

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Speaker 1: force in in the Newtonian sense, your predictions work out

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Speaker 1: just fine. But from an article that I want to

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Speaker 1: refer to later by a philosopher named Elliott sober Uh,

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Speaker 1: he writes, quote Albert Einstein spoke for many when he

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Speaker 1: said quote, it can scarcely be denied that the supreme

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Speaker 1: goal of all the rie is to make the irreducible

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Speaker 1: basic elements as simple and as few as possible without

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Speaker 1: having to surrender the adequate representation of a single datum

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Speaker 1: of experience, which in a way is again articulating something

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Speaker 1: like Ockham's razor. It's saying like, you want the simplest

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Speaker 1: possible explanation that explains everything. And if we're sticking with

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Speaker 1: Einstein for a minute, to go beyond positing something like angels,

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Speaker 1: if if you want to go into real scientific hypotheses

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Speaker 1: in history, there are all kinds of things that you

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Speaker 1: might argue we're sort of done away with by an

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Speaker 1: Acam's razor ish kind of process, though I think there

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Speaker 1: are some historians and philosophers of science that might disagree there.

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Speaker 1: But one example that comes to my mind is the

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Speaker 1: luminiferous ether. You know, it was once believed by many

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Speaker 1: scientists that there had to be a medium in space

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Speaker 1: through which light propagates, right, the same way that if

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Speaker 1: you want sound to propagate, there's no sound in space, right,

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Speaker 1: You've got to have sound traveling through a medium like air,

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Speaker 1: or like water, or like a you know, like a

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Speaker 1: steel wire. There must be matter to transmit that energy.

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Speaker 1: And so the idea was that space was filled with

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Speaker 1: this stuff, this ether, that light waves propagated through. And eventually,

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Speaker 1: due to Einstein and too other thinkers and experiments it

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Speaker 1: it started to become clear that the ether was superfluous.

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Speaker 1: You didn't need it to explain any of the properties

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Speaker 1: of light. Now, there's another example from history that often

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Speaker 1: comes up when people talk about Okham's razor. It's often

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Speaker 1: brought up as a great example of Ockham's razor being applied.

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Speaker 1: But we're gonna get to an article later on that

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Speaker 1: I think has presents a pretty devastating case against this

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Speaker 1: being true. But just to set it up here, it

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Speaker 1: is the idea of comparing the Ptolemaic universe versus the

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Speaker 1: Copernican universe, which obviously, this argument was brought to a

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Speaker 1: very dramatic end UH in the life of Galileo. Right

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Speaker 1: Galileo got into big trouble with the Inquisition for, among

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Speaker 1: other things, they were also politics involved, but four, among

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Speaker 1: other things, advocating the Copernican model over the Polemic model. UH.

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Speaker 1: For simplicity's sake, the Copernican model of the Solar System

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Speaker 1: was of course the one we know to be more

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Speaker 1: basically correct, not totally correct, but more correct because it

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Speaker 1: was heliocentric. It put the Sun at the center of

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Speaker 1: the Solar System and argued that the other planets, including

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Speaker 1: the Earth, all rotated around the Sun. UH. This of

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Speaker 1: course was not the orthodox astronomy of the day. The

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Speaker 1: more favored models were the traditional Toolemic model, which had

425
00:23:28,920 --> 00:23:31,720
Speaker 1: the Earth at the center and the the planets all

426
00:23:31,760 --> 00:23:35,320
Speaker 1: going around the Earth, and these strange kind of spirograph

427
00:23:35,440 --> 00:23:38,680
Speaker 1: patterns that had these things called epicycles where they would

428
00:23:38,720 --> 00:23:41,400
Speaker 1: sort of stop and then do a circle and another circle,

429
00:23:41,480 --> 00:23:45,440
Speaker 1: and like loops within their their traveling um. And then

430
00:23:45,480 --> 00:23:49,240
Speaker 1: you had some compromise models like the model of Tycho Brahi. Now,

431
00:23:49,240 --> 00:23:52,080
Speaker 1: the traditional argument here in favor of saying, you know,

432
00:23:52,160 --> 00:23:55,359
Speaker 1: Copernicus and Galileo were on the side of Occam's razor,

433
00:23:55,640 --> 00:23:59,280
Speaker 1: it would go something like, well, the Ptolemaic system and

434
00:23:59,320 --> 00:24:01,960
Speaker 1: the and the type Cobrahi models, they've got all this

435
00:24:02,160 --> 00:24:06,000
Speaker 1: extra stuff. You need to assume, all these weird extra assumptions,

436
00:24:06,040 --> 00:24:09,440
Speaker 1: like like epicycles, you know, like where the planets are

437
00:24:09,440 --> 00:24:12,000
Speaker 1: going around in loops and it's not explained exactly why

438
00:24:12,040 --> 00:24:14,439
Speaker 1: they're doing that. You just have to insert the loops

439
00:24:14,760 --> 00:24:18,040
Speaker 1: in order to make it match our are our observations,

440
00:24:18,359 --> 00:24:22,080
Speaker 1: and therefore the Tolemaic model was more complex. We'll come

441
00:24:22,119 --> 00:24:24,800
Speaker 1: back to that later on, because I think now it's

442
00:24:24,960 --> 00:24:28,359
Speaker 1: going to be important to get into some criticisms of

443
00:24:28,400 --> 00:24:31,399
Speaker 1: Acams razor. You know, if you go into especially a

444
00:24:31,400 --> 00:24:34,040
Speaker 1: lot of like kind of skeptic communities on the Internet,

445
00:24:34,600 --> 00:24:38,120
Speaker 1: you might sometimes see people treating ocams razor as if

446
00:24:38,160 --> 00:24:41,920
Speaker 1: it is some kind of law of nature, like referring

447
00:24:41,920 --> 00:24:44,240
Speaker 1: to Akam's razor in the same way you might refer

448
00:24:44,320 --> 00:24:48,320
Speaker 1: to proven theories about reality, uh, such as you know,

449
00:24:48,359 --> 00:24:52,080
Speaker 1: the equations describing the action of gravity or something. Uh.

450
00:24:52,080 --> 00:24:54,640
Speaker 1: And so I think while OCAM's razor is an interesting

451
00:24:54,680 --> 00:24:58,359
Speaker 1: and sometimes useful skeptical lens to apply, it is not

452
00:24:58,560 --> 00:25:00,480
Speaker 1: in fact a law of nature. And then there are

453
00:25:00,520 --> 00:25:04,119
Speaker 1: a couple of major branches of criticisms of ye old razor.

454
00:25:04,760 --> 00:25:07,760
Speaker 1: I think the first would be like accusations that it

455
00:25:07,960 --> 00:25:11,920
Speaker 1: is often misunderstood or misused. And then second there would

456
00:25:11,920 --> 00:25:14,840
Speaker 1: be actual attacks on the usefulness of the razor, even

457
00:25:14,920 --> 00:25:17,919
Speaker 1: when it is in its supposedly true form. Now, the

458
00:25:17,960 --> 00:25:19,800
Speaker 1: first thing would be pretty simple, and it's just the

459
00:25:19,840 --> 00:25:25,800
Speaker 1: idea that Ockham's razor is misunderstood, misquoted, misconstrued, misused. Uh.

460
00:25:25,840 --> 00:25:28,240
Speaker 1: I Actually I came across a funny blog post that,

461
00:25:28,320 --> 00:25:30,600
Speaker 1: of all things, pointed to a quote from a mystery

462
00:25:30,680 --> 00:25:36,240
Speaker 1: writer named Harlan Coben. Uh mystery writers, yeah, uh yeah,

463
00:25:36,280 --> 00:25:38,399
Speaker 1: I'm not familiar with this writer, but I thought this

464
00:25:38,480 --> 00:25:40,440
Speaker 1: was interesting this would you know? It was just an

465
00:25:40,440 --> 00:25:43,560
Speaker 1: example of somebody saying, no, you're not using Ockham's razor, right,

466
00:25:44,080 --> 00:25:47,480
Speaker 1: this writer wrote quote, most people oversimplify Ockham's razor to

467
00:25:47,600 --> 00:25:50,680
Speaker 1: mean the simplest answer is usually correct, but the real

468
00:25:50,800 --> 00:25:53,840
Speaker 1: meaning what the Franciscan Friar William of Oakin really wanted

469
00:25:53,880 --> 00:25:57,320
Speaker 1: to emphasize is that you shouldn't complicate, that you shouldn't

470
00:25:57,480 --> 00:26:00,880
Speaker 1: stack a theory. If a simpler exploit nation was at

471
00:26:00,880 --> 00:26:04,960
Speaker 1: the ready, pare it down, prune the excess. And so

472
00:26:05,000 --> 00:26:07,200
Speaker 1: I think looking at it this way, this fits more

473
00:26:07,280 --> 00:26:09,960
Speaker 1: with like the version that we were talking about with

474
00:26:10,000 --> 00:26:14,160
Speaker 1: Isaac Newton. Right. It's not necessarily a statement about simplicity

475
00:26:14,200 --> 00:26:17,800
Speaker 1: as a general principle, but saying that you shouldn't stack

476
00:26:17,960 --> 00:26:21,560
Speaker 1: things that explain the same outcomes on top of each

477
00:26:21,560 --> 00:26:24,800
Speaker 1: other because you get no extra usefulness out of that.

478
00:26:25,840 --> 00:26:28,040
Speaker 1: Another example that I was just thinking of that's come

479
00:26:28,080 --> 00:26:30,600
Speaker 1: up on the show before is the idea of aquatic

480
00:26:30,640 --> 00:26:34,640
Speaker 1: ape theory. Oh yes, this is the idea that, among

481
00:26:34,680 --> 00:26:38,040
Speaker 1: other things, humans are hairless because for a while our

482
00:26:38,359 --> 00:26:42,520
Speaker 1: our ancestors lived at least partially in the water. Yeah.

483
00:26:42,560 --> 00:26:44,439
Speaker 1: The ideas you look at a lot of our body

484
00:26:44,480 --> 00:26:51,200
Speaker 1: features are relatively smooth skin, bipedalism, layers of subcutaneous fat, uh,

485
00:26:51,240 --> 00:26:54,560
Speaker 1: the abilities of our vocal cords, all kinds of things

486
00:26:54,600 --> 00:26:57,840
Speaker 1: like that. The proponents of aquatic ape theory say, hey,

487
00:26:57,880 --> 00:27:01,239
Speaker 1: we've got all these strange anatomical more logical features that

488
00:27:01,280 --> 00:27:03,760
Speaker 1: are not the same as other great apes. Why do

489
00:27:03,800 --> 00:27:06,600
Speaker 1: we have those qualities? I think you could explain them

490
00:27:06,600 --> 00:27:09,080
Speaker 1: all if humans once needed to be in the water,

491
00:27:09,280 --> 00:27:11,880
Speaker 1: so they needed to be smooth. You have smooth skin

492
00:27:12,240 --> 00:27:15,840
Speaker 1: in order to be aerodynamic swimmers, and they became bipedal

493
00:27:16,000 --> 00:27:18,000
Speaker 1: so that they could wade around in the water. And

494
00:27:18,040 --> 00:27:20,320
Speaker 1: you come up with a list of explanations along these

495
00:27:20,359 --> 00:27:24,040
Speaker 1: lines that they would argue all point to an aquatic ancestry.

496
00:27:24,080 --> 00:27:26,920
Speaker 1: But there's a wrinkle there, because, of course, if that's

497
00:27:26,920 --> 00:27:29,879
Speaker 1: all true, the question is, then why did we retain

498
00:27:30,040 --> 00:27:32,879
Speaker 1: all those features after leaving the water? You know, humans

499
00:27:32,880 --> 00:27:34,760
Speaker 1: are not an aquatic species now, I mean, we can

500
00:27:34,840 --> 00:27:37,240
Speaker 1: go into the water, but water is not our primary

501
00:27:37,800 --> 00:27:41,280
Speaker 1: environmental niche So what you know, how can we still

502
00:27:41,359 --> 00:27:44,920
Speaker 1: have all those features? And the the aquatic ape theorists

503
00:27:45,080 --> 00:27:47,760
Speaker 1: might say, oh, well, once you came onto the land,

504
00:27:47,800 --> 00:27:50,640
Speaker 1: it actually was useful to be bipedal for these other reasons,

505
00:27:50,680 --> 00:27:53,320
Speaker 1: and which useful to be hairless for these other reasons,

506
00:27:53,320 --> 00:27:55,919
Speaker 1: which means you could cut out an entire step of

507
00:27:55,920 --> 00:27:57,840
Speaker 1: having to be in the water to stick with these

508
00:27:57,880 --> 00:28:00,200
Speaker 1: are useful for living on the land exactly you, I'd

509
00:28:00,200 --> 00:28:02,720
Speaker 1: apply ACAM here and say, if those features turn out

510
00:28:02,720 --> 00:28:05,600
Speaker 1: to be useful on land, why wouldn't they just evolve

511
00:28:05,680 --> 00:28:08,199
Speaker 1: on land in the first place? Right, So there is

512
00:28:08,359 --> 00:28:11,920
Speaker 1: like you've you've you've been up then creating or redirecting

513
00:28:12,320 --> 00:28:16,520
Speaker 1: to the hypothesis that is one enormous step shorter. Yeah,

514
00:28:16,560 --> 00:28:18,800
Speaker 1: and so aquatic ape theory, I think is one of

515
00:28:18,800 --> 00:28:22,960
Speaker 1: those things that, like it would be hard to completely disprove.

516
00:28:23,040 --> 00:28:26,520
Speaker 1: I think that there is no physical evidence pointing toward it.

517
00:28:26,520 --> 00:28:29,199
Speaker 1: It would be hard to say this is impossible to

518
00:28:29,359 --> 00:28:32,240
Speaker 1: have happened, but there's just no reason to assume it.

519
00:28:32,240 --> 00:28:34,639
Speaker 1: It just it just like adds in an extra step

520
00:28:34,680 --> 00:28:38,360
Speaker 1: of explanations that don't explain anything any better than other

521
00:28:38,400 --> 00:28:41,120
Speaker 1: explanations could. Yeah. I mean, it's kind of like if

522
00:28:41,160 --> 00:28:44,760
Speaker 1: I come home from work and I have say beer

523
00:28:44,840 --> 00:28:48,240
Speaker 1: and bread. Uh, maybe I stopped at two places to

524
00:28:48,280 --> 00:28:49,640
Speaker 1: get the beer in the bread. I got the beer

525
00:28:49,640 --> 00:28:51,440
Speaker 1: at one place and the bread of the other, But

526
00:28:51,520 --> 00:28:53,880
Speaker 1: I also probably just stopped at one store to get

527
00:28:53,880 --> 00:28:57,080
Speaker 1: both of them. Both are likely one is a shorter trip.

528
00:28:57,280 --> 00:28:58,960
Speaker 1: I feel like you would also have to add in

529
00:28:59,080 --> 00:29:01,520
Speaker 1: something it kind of extravagant that would be like you

530
00:29:01,600 --> 00:29:04,600
Speaker 1: stopped at the way home and you entered a raffle

531
00:29:04,680 --> 00:29:08,280
Speaker 1: contest in which you won beer and bread. Uh. And

532
00:29:08,320 --> 00:29:10,959
Speaker 1: then you also may have stopped at the store, you know,

533
00:29:11,080 --> 00:29:13,720
Speaker 1: to get something else, but like, yeah, I stole beer

534
00:29:13,720 --> 00:29:16,120
Speaker 1: and bread, as like when the simple explanation is probably

535
00:29:16,200 --> 00:29:18,720
Speaker 1: probably just bought beer and bread. Where beer and bread

536
00:29:18,840 --> 00:29:21,880
Speaker 1: was was placed in my car by a mysterious stranger.

537
00:29:22,160 --> 00:29:25,680
Speaker 1: Like these are all things that are possible and could

538
00:29:25,720 --> 00:29:28,080
Speaker 1: conceivably be the reason that I have beer and bread

539
00:29:28,200 --> 00:29:34,320
Speaker 1: in the car. But OCAM's razor slices away the unnecessary steps,

540
00:29:34,320 --> 00:29:38,120
Speaker 1: the less likely steps for the the shorter trip between

541
00:29:38,120 --> 00:29:40,520
Speaker 1: point and point B. Right. And I think in cases

542
00:29:40,600 --> 00:29:43,440
Speaker 1: like that, you could say that ocums raizor doesn't necessarily

543
00:29:43,640 --> 00:29:46,640
Speaker 1: prove a theory wrong, but it is kind of a

544
00:29:46,720 --> 00:29:53,400
Speaker 1: useful heuristic. It might help you use your intellectual time wisely. Right. Uh.

545
00:29:53,440 --> 00:29:55,160
Speaker 1: But and and that gets us to the next step,

546
00:29:55,200 --> 00:29:58,920
Speaker 1: which is the more comprehensive criticism, the idea that ACAM

547
00:29:59,080 --> 00:30:01,920
Speaker 1: is maybe in act wrong, more not useful. I think

548
00:30:01,920 --> 00:30:05,080
Speaker 1: in some cases this criticism is true, so maybe we

549
00:30:05,080 --> 00:30:07,200
Speaker 1: should get into it a bit. The first article I

550
00:30:07,240 --> 00:30:11,240
Speaker 1: wanted to look at is called The Tyranny of Simple Explanations,

551
00:30:11,280 --> 00:30:13,800
Speaker 1: and it was published in the Atlantic. It was written

552
00:30:13,840 --> 00:30:16,400
Speaker 1: by the science writer Philip Ball, one of my favorite

553
00:30:16,400 --> 00:30:19,800
Speaker 1: current science writers, who wrote the book Beyond Weird, a

554
00:30:19,880 --> 00:30:23,160
Speaker 1: really fantastic book about quantum physics that I recommended last summer.

555
00:30:23,480 --> 00:30:25,440
Speaker 1: This is one of your summer reading picks. I think, yeah,

556
00:30:25,680 --> 00:30:28,120
Speaker 1: it's really good. It's one of those books that you

557
00:30:28,160 --> 00:30:30,000
Speaker 1: may think you already you know, you've already read a

558
00:30:30,040 --> 00:30:32,480
Speaker 1: quantum physics book. You know, you know the basics, you know,

559
00:30:32,640 --> 00:30:35,200
Speaker 1: you know the the what the interpretations are and all that.

560
00:30:35,400 --> 00:30:37,320
Speaker 1: I feel like this is one you can still be

561
00:30:37,440 --> 00:30:40,880
Speaker 1: newly amazed by and learn a lot more from and

562
00:30:41,080 --> 00:30:43,760
Speaker 1: true form as a great science writer. Ball I think

563
00:30:43,800 --> 00:30:47,720
Speaker 1: makes a fantastic case in this article against Stockholm's razor,

564
00:30:47,840 --> 00:30:51,360
Speaker 1: against you know, a liberal use of it. So he

565
00:30:51,400 --> 00:30:54,280
Speaker 1: starts by saying, quote, Ockham's razor is often stated as

566
00:30:54,320 --> 00:30:58,160
Speaker 1: an injunction not to make more assumptions than you absolutely need.

567
00:30:58,640 --> 00:31:02,320
Speaker 1: And in that way, it's almost a truism, right, I mean, like,

568
00:31:02,680 --> 00:31:06,120
Speaker 1: when when you phrase it that way, who would say, well, yeah, no,

569
00:31:06,280 --> 00:31:09,640
Speaker 1: I want to make more assumptions than I need. Yeah,

570
00:31:09,680 --> 00:31:13,160
Speaker 1: I mean you can come back to, like a forensic example, right,

571
00:31:14,000 --> 00:31:17,880
Speaker 1: detective work, which even Carl Sagan makes a discuss this

572
00:31:17,960 --> 00:31:20,720
Speaker 1: a lot like committing science to UH to the work

573
00:31:20,720 --> 00:31:24,600
Speaker 1: of a detective, like how many hypotheses do you need

574
00:31:24,720 --> 00:31:28,160
Speaker 1: for a murder? Right, and you know there's gonna You're

575
00:31:28,200 --> 00:31:31,360
Speaker 1: gonna be the obvious ones that you know, especially the

576
00:31:31,360 --> 00:31:33,880
Speaker 1: acam's razer, are going to be the primary candidates that

577
00:31:33,920 --> 00:31:36,680
Speaker 1: it was someone the victim knew, that it was, like

578
00:31:36,720 --> 00:31:41,000
Speaker 1: a spouse or a friend, etcetera. Uh, Rather than inventing

579
00:31:41,000 --> 00:31:44,240
Speaker 1: wild scenarios with no evidence to base them on, right, saying,

580
00:31:44,320 --> 00:31:47,280
Speaker 1: you know, certainly getting into possible scenarios like maybe it

581
00:31:47,480 --> 00:31:51,280
Speaker 1: was the random work of a serial murder. Serial murders exist,

582
00:31:51,520 --> 00:31:54,320
Speaker 1: this does happen from time to time, but is it

583
00:31:54,400 --> 00:31:57,240
Speaker 1: the most likely scenario? And then that's not even getting

584
00:31:57,240 --> 00:32:01,000
Speaker 1: into wilder possibilities like well, perhaps it was a an assassin,

585
00:32:01,080 --> 00:32:03,880
Speaker 1: a spy whom it's took them for another person. Well

586
00:32:03,960 --> 00:32:06,800
Speaker 1: that's possible too, but again, more far more steps that

587
00:32:06,840 --> 00:32:11,200
Speaker 1: are necessary, the the shorter trip is the more likely. Right,

588
00:32:11,320 --> 00:32:14,400
Speaker 1: And in terms of not making more assumptions than you need,

589
00:32:14,520 --> 00:32:16,880
Speaker 1: ball rights that this is of course good advice. If

590
00:32:16,880 --> 00:32:19,160
Speaker 1: you're trying to come up with a good explanation for something,

591
00:32:19,440 --> 00:32:22,120
Speaker 1: you add nothing by writing in a bunch of extra

592
00:32:22,200 --> 00:32:26,600
Speaker 1: complications that don't help the explanation explain anything more than

593
00:32:26,640 --> 00:32:29,480
Speaker 1: it did when it was simpler. They should. Explanations should

594
00:32:29,480 --> 00:32:32,000
Speaker 1: be as simple as they can be without losing power

595
00:32:32,040 --> 00:32:36,160
Speaker 1: to explain and predict. Quote. That's why most scientific theories

596
00:32:36,200 --> 00:32:41,000
Speaker 1: are intentional simplifications. They ignore some effects, not because they

597
00:32:41,000 --> 00:32:44,240
Speaker 1: don't happen, but because they're thought to have a negligible

598
00:32:44,240 --> 00:32:48,000
Speaker 1: effect on the outcome. Applied this way, simplicity is a

599
00:32:48,040 --> 00:32:52,560
Speaker 1: practical virtue allowing a clearer view of what's most important

600
00:32:52,600 --> 00:32:56,200
Speaker 1: in a phenomenon. So again, he's saying there that okhams Razor.

601
00:32:56,360 --> 00:32:59,840
Speaker 1: It's it's not necessarily that Okams razor tells you what's true,

602
00:33:00,360 --> 00:33:05,080
Speaker 1: but Acams razor makes theories useful because then he goes

603
00:33:05,120 --> 00:33:08,000
Speaker 1: on to argue that Acam's razor is quote fetishized and

604
00:33:08,120 --> 00:33:12,640
Speaker 1: misapplied as a guiding beacon for scientific inquiry. So he thinks, what,

605
00:33:12,840 --> 00:33:15,040
Speaker 1: you know, what we're just saying, Simplicity is a virtue

606
00:33:15,080 --> 00:33:19,200
Speaker 1: of theories and explanations because they make theories clearer, easier

607
00:33:19,240 --> 00:33:22,640
Speaker 1: to use, but it's dangerous to jump from that to

608
00:33:22,720 --> 00:33:26,280
Speaker 1: the assumption that simplicity is actually a measure of truth.

609
00:33:26,680 --> 00:33:30,200
Speaker 1: Quote here, the the implication is the simplest theory isn't

610
00:33:30,200 --> 00:33:34,440
Speaker 1: just more convenient, but gets closer to how nature really works.

611
00:33:34,840 --> 00:33:38,400
Speaker 1: In other words, it's more probably the correct. One Ball

612
00:33:38,440 --> 00:33:41,640
Speaker 1: says this is wrong is simplicity does not actually tell

613
00:33:41,680 --> 00:33:44,840
Speaker 1: you anything about which theories are right and which ones

614
00:33:44,840 --> 00:33:48,320
Speaker 1: are wrong. He argues, there's really no reason to believe

615
00:33:48,400 --> 00:33:52,440
Speaker 1: that simpler theories better described nature than complicated ones, and

616
00:33:52,480 --> 00:33:55,080
Speaker 1: he gives a few examples. He talks about Francis Crick

617
00:33:55,240 --> 00:33:58,800
Speaker 1: warning against trying to apply Okham's razor as a critical

618
00:33:58,840 --> 00:34:02,840
Speaker 1: tool for theories and biology because biology gets really messy,

619
00:34:02,880 --> 00:34:05,520
Speaker 1: and he cites examples where it kind of led us astray.

620
00:34:05,600 --> 00:34:09,320
Speaker 1: Like he he cites Alfred Kempy's eighteen seventy nine proof

621
00:34:09,400 --> 00:34:12,600
Speaker 1: of the four color theorem and mathematics, which was kind

622
00:34:12,600 --> 00:34:15,080
Speaker 1: of favored for a while because the proof was considered

623
00:34:15,239 --> 00:34:18,040
Speaker 1: very simple and very elegant, but it turned out to

624
00:34:18,040 --> 00:34:21,400
Speaker 1: be wrong, you know, very roughly. Here, it makes me

625
00:34:21,480 --> 00:34:23,520
Speaker 1: think of something we talked about before in the show

626
00:34:23,560 --> 00:34:28,320
Speaker 1: about how how evolution is often kind of a miser

627
00:34:28,400 --> 00:34:32,480
Speaker 1: it's often cheap. Uh, and so part of that you

628
00:34:32,480 --> 00:34:35,600
Speaker 1: could you could apply the simplicity model to that and say, Okay,

629
00:34:35,760 --> 00:34:38,560
Speaker 1: it's that means it tends to take the shortest route,

630
00:34:38,600 --> 00:34:42,440
Speaker 1: it tends to to perhaps engage in simplicity, but at

631
00:34:42,480 --> 00:34:46,080
Speaker 1: the same time, uh, it's kind of lazy, and lazy

632
00:34:46,120 --> 00:34:49,399
Speaker 1: can create these sort of messes where and yeah, yeah,

633
00:34:49,400 --> 00:34:53,000
Speaker 1: we're saying like some biological structure has evolved, you know,

634
00:34:53,040 --> 00:34:55,920
Speaker 1: for one thing, but it ends up getting partially abandoned

635
00:34:55,920 --> 00:34:58,120
Speaker 1: and re used for something else, And it can get

636
00:34:58,160 --> 00:35:01,000
Speaker 1: it can get messy, it can get complicated. Million years

637
00:35:01,000 --> 00:35:05,080
Speaker 1: of shortcuts can turn into a quite circuitous route. Yeah,

638
00:35:05,160 --> 00:35:08,160
Speaker 1: and so Ball rights that in his view, he has

639
00:35:08,200 --> 00:35:11,360
Speaker 1: not found a single case in the history of science

640
00:35:11,360 --> 00:35:15,440
Speaker 1: where Akham's razor was actually used to settle a debate

641
00:35:15,560 --> 00:35:19,080
Speaker 1: between rival theories. So I just want to make sure

642
00:35:19,120 --> 00:35:21,520
Speaker 1: that his distinction is coming through. He is saying, it's

643
00:35:21,680 --> 00:35:25,520
Speaker 1: useful for trying to make theories easier to talk about,

644
00:35:25,560 --> 00:35:29,080
Speaker 1: easier to understand, easier to apply, But when it comes

645
00:35:29,239 --> 00:35:32,359
Speaker 1: between competing theories, trying to say which one is more

646
00:35:32,400 --> 00:35:36,040
Speaker 1: true which one makes better predictions. He has not found

647
00:35:36,080 --> 00:35:40,080
Speaker 1: a single case where Okam's razor was the decisive factor.

648
00:35:40,520 --> 00:35:42,080
Speaker 1: And what's worse, he says a lot of people have

649
00:35:42,120 --> 00:35:46,440
Speaker 1: tried to retroactively apply Ockham's razor to historical scientific debates

650
00:35:46,440 --> 00:35:50,160
Speaker 1: where it was not in fact decisive in reality. Uh

651
00:35:50,200 --> 00:35:52,360
Speaker 1: And he cites as an example a debate we've already

652
00:35:52,360 --> 00:35:56,239
Speaker 1: discussed the geocentric versus the heliocentric solar system. And I

653
00:35:56,239 --> 00:35:58,479
Speaker 1: thought his take on this was really interesting because I

654
00:35:58,480 --> 00:36:01,719
Speaker 1: I had been taken in. I think I had previously thought, well,

655
00:36:01,760 --> 00:36:05,960
Speaker 1: maybe a really good case of Akham's razor is heliocentrism

656
00:36:06,040 --> 00:36:10,000
Speaker 1: winning over geocentrism, because with geocentrism you just had to

657
00:36:10,000 --> 00:36:12,680
Speaker 1: make all these weird assumptions about the movements of planet.

658
00:36:12,680 --> 00:36:15,399
Speaker 1: You had to do extra work to make it fit, right,

659
00:36:15,680 --> 00:36:18,319
Speaker 1: That's what I thought. But he actually digs into the

660
00:36:18,360 --> 00:36:21,480
Speaker 1: debate of the time Ball points out that in reality,

661
00:36:21,520 --> 00:36:22,919
Speaker 1: So you know, we talked about one of the big

662
00:36:22,960 --> 00:36:26,240
Speaker 1: things being all these epicycles that in the ptolemic model,

663
00:36:26,400 --> 00:36:29,640
Speaker 1: the the geocentric view, the planets go around the Earth,

664
00:36:29,680 --> 00:36:31,279
Speaker 1: but they don't just go around. They make all these

665
00:36:31,280 --> 00:36:34,360
Speaker 1: weird loops and stuff called epicycles. You had to build

666
00:36:34,400 --> 00:36:37,239
Speaker 1: that in in order to explain what astronomers saw in

667
00:36:37,280 --> 00:36:39,960
Speaker 1: the night sky, the planets appearing to regress. They'd go

668
00:36:40,200 --> 00:36:43,560
Speaker 1: back and forth and stuff. Um so, so he says,

669
00:36:43,600 --> 00:36:46,480
Speaker 1: we've got all these epicycles. But Ball points out that

670
00:36:46,520 --> 00:36:49,560
Speaker 1: in reality, the Copernican model that was being argued about

671
00:36:49,560 --> 00:36:54,839
Speaker 1: in Galileo's day, that heliocentric model, was also full of epicycles.

672
00:36:54,920 --> 00:36:58,080
Speaker 1: And this was because Copernicus was not aware of what

673
00:36:58,160 --> 00:37:02,040
Speaker 1: Johannes Kepler would later discover about the orbits of planetary

674
00:37:02,080 --> 00:37:06,520
Speaker 1: bodies being elliptical rather than circular. So because he lacked

675
00:37:06,560 --> 00:37:09,600
Speaker 1: that crucial assumption that that important part of the theory,

676
00:37:09,840 --> 00:37:13,200
Speaker 1: Copernicus also had to build weird little loops into his

677
00:37:13,280 --> 00:37:17,200
Speaker 1: heliocentric model of the Solar System. He got the heliocentrism right,

678
00:37:17,480 --> 00:37:20,239
Speaker 1: but he thought the planets were moving in perfect circles

679
00:37:20,360 --> 00:37:24,520
Speaker 1: that didn't match observations either. So like Ptolemy, he he cheated.

680
00:37:24,560 --> 00:37:26,680
Speaker 1: He put all these loops in there to make the

681
00:37:26,719 --> 00:37:31,080
Speaker 1: model work out right, and it wasn't until heliocentrism was

682
00:37:31,160 --> 00:37:34,440
Speaker 1: combined with Kepler and elliptical orbits that the epicycles were

683
00:37:34,480 --> 00:37:37,799
Speaker 1: finally banished, and based on this, Ball argues that there

684
00:37:37,880 --> 00:37:39,920
Speaker 1: was really no way at the time to suggest that

685
00:37:39,960 --> 00:37:43,640
Speaker 1: the Copernican system was simpler. In fact, he points out

686
00:37:43,640 --> 00:37:48,120
Speaker 1: that Copernicus invokes a number of weird, non scientific assumptions

687
00:37:48,120 --> 00:37:51,480
Speaker 1: in support of his model. For example, quote uh, in

688
00:37:51,560 --> 00:37:56,120
Speaker 1: his main work on the heliocentric theory, De revolutiontionibus, I'm

689
00:37:56,120 --> 00:38:01,680
Speaker 1: gonna have trouble with this one day revolutiontionibus orbium celestium. Uh,

690
00:38:01,719 --> 00:38:03,880
Speaker 1: he argued that it was proper for the sun to

691
00:38:04,000 --> 00:38:06,759
Speaker 1: sit at the center quote, as if resting on a

692
00:38:06,880 --> 00:38:11,560
Speaker 1: kingly throne, governing the stars like a wise ruler. That

693
00:38:11,600 --> 00:38:14,680
Speaker 1: doesn't sound like a very scientific criterion. No, I mean,

694
00:38:14,680 --> 00:38:17,080
Speaker 1: maybe he's kind of breaking it down for people, you know.

695
00:38:17,800 --> 00:38:19,560
Speaker 1: I mean, of course he did turn out to be right,

696
00:38:19,840 --> 00:38:24,440
Speaker 1: But like that, that seems like an unjustified assumption based

697
00:38:24,480 --> 00:38:27,680
Speaker 1: on what he knew at the time. Uh. Ball also

698
00:38:27,760 --> 00:38:30,439
Speaker 1: points out that by the time Kepler comes around, we're

699
00:38:30,480 --> 00:38:33,480
Speaker 1: no longer in a situation of competing theories trying to

700
00:38:33,560 --> 00:38:40,040
Speaker 1: explain the same observations, because Kepler had access to better observations. Quote.

701
00:38:40,280 --> 00:38:42,560
Speaker 1: The point here is that as a tool for distinguishing

702
00:38:42,560 --> 00:38:46,480
Speaker 1: between rival theories. Occam's razor is only relevant if the

703
00:38:46,480 --> 00:38:50,719
Speaker 1: two theories predict identical results, but one is simpler than

704
00:38:50,719 --> 00:38:53,759
Speaker 1: the other, which is to say, it makes fewer assumptions.

705
00:38:54,200 --> 00:38:57,960
Speaker 1: This is a situation rarely, if ever, encountered in science.

706
00:38:58,400 --> 00:39:02,360
Speaker 1: Much more often theories are distinguish not by making fewer assumptions,

707
00:39:02,400 --> 00:39:06,640
Speaker 1: but different ones. It's then not obvious how to weigh

708
00:39:06,640 --> 00:39:09,799
Speaker 1: them up. I think this is a fantastic point, right,

709
00:39:09,840 --> 00:39:12,040
Speaker 1: I think to come back to the aquatic ape theory

710
00:39:12,040 --> 00:39:14,320
Speaker 1: like that, that is one of these rare situations. I

711
00:39:14,360 --> 00:39:16,399
Speaker 1: think that it seems to match up, right, it's making

712
00:39:16,440 --> 00:39:19,160
Speaker 1: additional assumptions, and it's like, oh, yeah, we would have

713
00:39:19,200 --> 00:39:22,600
Speaker 1: to keep those traits later anyway, we need explanations for that.

714
00:39:23,120 --> 00:39:26,120
Speaker 1: It just seems like it's making more assumptions. But that's

715
00:39:26,160 --> 00:39:28,880
Speaker 1: almost never how it goes. Usually the assumption is just

716
00:39:29,000 --> 00:39:31,760
Speaker 1: different assumptions, and then how do you know which assumption

717
00:39:31,920 --> 00:39:34,879
Speaker 1: is simpler than the other one? Right, the the whole

718
00:39:34,880 --> 00:39:40,840
Speaker 1: aquatic ape section of the of presumed evolutionary advancement is

719
00:39:40,880 --> 00:39:44,000
Speaker 1: kind of its own epicycle. Yeah, exactly removed because there's

720
00:39:44,000 --> 00:39:47,200
Speaker 1: an epicycle in this theory but not in this one exactly. Yes,

721
00:39:47,440 --> 00:39:50,000
Speaker 1: I mean, if you're trying to look at like not

722
00:39:50,400 --> 00:39:54,640
Speaker 1: additional assumptions in the theory, but just different assumptions in

723
00:39:54,680 --> 00:39:57,880
Speaker 1: the theory. Even cases where to us it might seem

724
00:39:57,880 --> 00:40:00,239
Speaker 1: obvious one way or another, which one seems simple, alert

725
00:40:00,239 --> 00:40:02,879
Speaker 1: it's not always obvious to people at the time. Uh

726
00:40:02,920 --> 00:40:06,840
Speaker 1: he He brings up the question of Darwinian evolution, is

727
00:40:06,920 --> 00:40:11,719
Speaker 1: descent from a common ancestor more or less complicated than

728
00:40:11,760 --> 00:40:15,080
Speaker 1: the idea of a divine created order common descent? I

729
00:40:15,360 --> 00:40:18,000
Speaker 1: think that would seem like a less complicated theory to

730
00:40:18,080 --> 00:40:21,160
Speaker 1: many of us today, But would it have seemed simpler

731
00:40:21,400 --> 00:40:23,680
Speaker 1: to the world view of people who were debating common

732
00:40:23,719 --> 00:40:26,560
Speaker 1: descent in like the mid late nineteenth century. Who you know,

733
00:40:26,600 --> 00:40:29,280
Speaker 1: you've already got a theistic worldview that's basically a built

734
00:40:29,280 --> 00:40:32,200
Speaker 1: in assumption, right right, Yeah, Yeah. A lot of this

735
00:40:32,280 --> 00:40:34,919
Speaker 1: does come down again coming to what we spoke about

736
00:40:34,960 --> 00:40:37,959
Speaker 1: earlier regarding the basic religious argument. Like if you're coming

737
00:40:38,000 --> 00:40:42,359
Speaker 1: from a really religious background where we've had this um this,

738
00:40:42,920 --> 00:40:45,120
Speaker 1: you know, the the idea the reality of a God

739
00:40:45,200 --> 00:40:48,680
Speaker 1: hammered into you, and then you're presented with with with

740
00:40:48,719 --> 00:40:51,120
Speaker 1: the atheist argument you know, you may say, well know

741
00:40:51,280 --> 00:40:54,839
Speaker 1: that that is that requires far of there had so

742
00:40:54,840 --> 00:40:59,319
Speaker 1: many epicycles in your your your your atheism, where my

743
00:40:59,320 --> 00:41:02,480
Speaker 1: my face is just a clear and straightforward as a whistle.

744
00:41:02,520 --> 00:41:04,960
Speaker 1: I mean people did actually argue that way. They'd say,

745
00:41:04,960 --> 00:41:07,160
Speaker 1: look at all this weird stuff you have to assume

746
00:41:07,200 --> 00:41:09,319
Speaker 1: about the history of life, and all I believe is

747
00:41:09,360 --> 00:41:12,239
Speaker 1: there's a divine created order. I mean, that's it's like

748
00:41:12,280 --> 00:41:15,960
Speaker 1: a moper sticker thing, like, uh, what God, God wrote it,

749
00:41:16,040 --> 00:41:20,040
Speaker 1: I believe it in the story three steps that theory, Yeah,

750
00:41:20,440 --> 00:41:22,799
Speaker 1: it is a simplicity is often in the eye of

751
00:41:22,800 --> 00:41:25,680
Speaker 1: the beholder, like you don't have I mean, there are

752
00:41:25,719 --> 00:41:27,920
Speaker 1: some people who would argue there are cases where you

753
00:41:27,920 --> 00:41:33,040
Speaker 1: can try to mathematically quantify uh, complications or assumptions or simplicity,

754
00:41:33,160 --> 00:41:35,279
Speaker 1: but in general that's really hard to do. You don't

755
00:41:35,320 --> 00:41:38,680
Speaker 1: have an objective measure that you can apply from the outside.

756
00:41:38,960 --> 00:41:40,879
Speaker 1: A lot of times it's just going to be kind

757
00:41:40,880 --> 00:41:44,960
Speaker 1: of fuzzy qualitative judgments. What what seems like less of

758
00:41:45,000 --> 00:41:48,120
Speaker 1: an assumption to you. You lack an objective measure, people

759
00:41:48,160 --> 00:41:51,240
Speaker 1: go with their intuitions. Uh, and this does not seem

760
00:41:51,280 --> 00:41:54,840
Speaker 1: like a good recipe for sorting between theories. So, coming

761
00:41:54,840 --> 00:41:58,600
Speaker 1: back again to two balse formulation of of Okham's razor,

762
00:41:58,640 --> 00:42:01,319
Speaker 1: It's basically like, if you have two theories that are

763
00:42:01,360 --> 00:42:04,920
Speaker 1: competing to explain the same things, they make all the

764
00:42:05,000 --> 00:42:08,520
Speaker 1: same predictions and explain it equally well. Yeah, they explain

765
00:42:08,600 --> 00:42:11,239
Speaker 1: that they make the same predictions explain things equally well.

766
00:42:12,120 --> 00:42:14,759
Speaker 1: But one of them has more assumptions, you go with

767
00:42:14,800 --> 00:42:17,560
Speaker 1: the one with fewer assumptions. But Ball argues that you

768
00:42:17,600 --> 00:42:21,200
Speaker 1: almost never, in reality get cases where the predictions of

769
00:42:21,239 --> 00:42:26,040
Speaker 1: two theories are exactly the same. Instead quote, scientific models

770
00:42:26,080 --> 00:42:30,480
Speaker 1: that differ in their assumptions typically make slightly different predictions too.

771
00:42:30,840 --> 00:42:34,880
Speaker 1: It is these predictions, not the criteria of simplicity, that

772
00:42:34,960 --> 00:42:38,920
Speaker 1: are of the greatest use for evaluating rival theories. Again,

773
00:42:38,960 --> 00:42:41,600
Speaker 1: I think this is a good point. I mean, theories

774
00:42:41,640 --> 00:42:44,560
Speaker 1: almost never predict the exact same thing, so why not

775
00:42:44,640 --> 00:42:48,480
Speaker 1: just judge them on how good their predictions are. Uh. Finally,

776
00:42:48,480 --> 00:42:50,960
Speaker 1: he writes that he can only think of one real

777
00:42:51,040 --> 00:42:54,560
Speaker 1: instance in UH, in science where there are rival theories

778
00:42:55,040 --> 00:42:58,799
Speaker 1: that make exactly the same predictions on the basis of

779
00:42:58,920 --> 00:43:02,680
Speaker 1: quote easily in new morable and comparable assumptions. And this

780
00:43:02,960 --> 00:43:06,279
Speaker 1: one example he can think of is the different interpretations

781
00:43:06,320 --> 00:43:09,680
Speaker 1: of quantum mechanics, which I think is a fantastic example,

782
00:43:09,680 --> 00:43:11,239
Speaker 1: and that did not come to my mind, but I

783
00:43:11,280 --> 00:43:15,000
Speaker 1: think he's exactly right about this. So we've discussed interpretations

784
00:43:15,000 --> 00:43:17,239
Speaker 1: of quantum mechanics on the show before. We're not going

785
00:43:17,280 --> 00:43:19,640
Speaker 1: to go deep on that, but just for a very

786
00:43:19,640 --> 00:43:24,320
Speaker 1: short refresher. Basically, we know that the mathematical fundamentals of

787
00:43:24,400 --> 00:43:28,120
Speaker 1: quantum theory are correct. They make extremely good predictions, like

788
00:43:28,160 --> 00:43:31,799
Speaker 1: we know the theories right, but there's a problem. They

789
00:43:31,840 --> 00:43:36,200
Speaker 1: predict a world of probabilities, not of certainties. So if

790
00:43:36,200 --> 00:43:38,719
Speaker 1: you have a theory that predicts an electron will be

791
00:43:38,920 --> 00:43:41,680
Speaker 1: fifty percent in one state and fifty percent in an

792
00:43:41,719 --> 00:43:46,200
Speaker 1: opposite state, but we only ever observe physical reality embodying

793
00:43:46,320 --> 00:43:48,839
Speaker 1: one state at a time, how do you resolve that

794
00:43:48,960 --> 00:43:52,400
Speaker 1: it just does not match our experience of reality. So

795
00:43:52,440 --> 00:43:55,120
Speaker 1: that's where the interpretations of quantum mechanics come in. There

796
00:43:55,160 --> 00:43:59,800
Speaker 1: they're trying to reconcile this difference, explaining why the indeterministic,

797
00:44:00,000 --> 00:44:05,240
Speaker 1: hobbabilistic quantum world somehow resolves into the solid deterministic world

798
00:44:05,280 --> 00:44:08,880
Speaker 1: that we experience every day. And there are tons of interpretations.

799
00:44:08,920 --> 00:44:11,960
Speaker 1: You've got like the classic Copenhagen interpretation, which predicts that

800
00:44:12,040 --> 00:44:14,920
Speaker 1: objects exist in a kind of in a state of

801
00:44:14,920 --> 00:44:18,719
Speaker 1: superposition until something interacts with them and collapses the way

802
00:44:18,719 --> 00:44:21,600
Speaker 1: of function makes them assume one state or the other.

803
00:44:22,040 --> 00:44:26,279
Speaker 1: You've got the now popular many worlds interpretation, originating with

804
00:44:26,320 --> 00:44:28,239
Speaker 1: the physicist you Ever at the Third in the late

805
00:44:28,280 --> 00:44:32,400
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties. This suggests that reality is constantly splitting into

806
00:44:32,480 --> 00:44:37,160
Speaker 1: infinite alternate timelines based on the different possible outcomes of

807
00:44:37,280 --> 00:44:41,040
Speaker 1: unresolved quantum states. And and we only observe one outcome

808
00:44:41,120 --> 00:44:43,759
Speaker 1: because we are also splitting, and the current version of

809
00:44:43,880 --> 00:44:47,239
Speaker 1: us is only one of many uses that experiences one

810
00:44:47,280 --> 00:44:49,239
Speaker 1: world at a time. And then you've got a bunch

811
00:44:49,280 --> 00:44:53,200
Speaker 1: of other theories to Basically, these interpretations make exactly the

812
00:44:53,280 --> 00:44:57,040
Speaker 1: same physical predictions. No matter which one of them is correct,

813
00:44:57,120 --> 00:45:00,800
Speaker 1: the outcomes of our experiments will be exactly the s aim,

814
00:45:00,800 --> 00:45:03,640
Speaker 1: so there's no way to test which one is right. Though,

815
00:45:03,640 --> 00:45:06,080
Speaker 1: And in a funny turn, Ball points out that Ockham's

816
00:45:06,160 --> 00:45:09,719
Speaker 1: razor has been invoked both for and against the many

817
00:45:09,760 --> 00:45:12,520
Speaker 1: worlds interpretation, again coming back to the fact that a

818
00:45:12,520 --> 00:45:16,160
Speaker 1: lot of times this just comes down to people's intuitive judgments,

819
00:45:16,160 --> 00:45:18,880
Speaker 1: like he quotes the quantum theorist role in omnus quote,

820
00:45:19,080 --> 00:45:22,080
Speaker 1: as far as economy of thought is concerned, there never

821
00:45:22,280 --> 00:45:26,200
Speaker 1: was anything in the history of thought so bluntly contrary

822
00:45:26,239 --> 00:45:30,080
Speaker 1: to Ockham's rule than ever it's many worlds. On the

823
00:45:30,120 --> 00:45:33,120
Speaker 1: other hand, you've got a modern physicist like Sean Carroll

824
00:45:33,200 --> 00:45:37,320
Speaker 1: of of Caltech who advocates the many world's interpretation, specifically

825
00:45:37,360 --> 00:45:41,120
Speaker 1: because he argues it's the simplest interpretation of quantum theory.

826
00:45:41,520 --> 00:45:44,239
Speaker 1: He says, it doesn't make any additional assumptions. It's the

827
00:45:44,280 --> 00:45:47,719
Speaker 1: simplest way you can map the theory onto reality. The

828
00:45:47,760 --> 00:45:50,480
Speaker 1: weird thing about about this, too, is that I feel like,

829
00:45:50,560 --> 00:45:53,919
Speaker 1: at this point, if you consume enough science fiction, and

830
00:45:54,080 --> 00:45:56,760
Speaker 1: not even just science fiction but general just popular culture,

831
00:45:57,040 --> 00:46:00,239
Speaker 1: the many World's interpretation has been and you did, at

832
00:46:00,320 --> 00:46:04,600
Speaker 1: least casually so often, then in a way it feels

833
00:46:04,600 --> 00:46:08,279
Speaker 1: slightly more plausible, just because just due to familiarity, which

834
00:46:08,320 --> 00:46:10,759
Speaker 1: I realized is not a scientific argue, like you could

835
00:46:10,760 --> 00:46:14,000
Speaker 1: not you could not reasonably say, well, I leaned towards

836
00:46:14,000 --> 00:46:17,040
Speaker 1: many worlds interpretation because that's how The X Men works.

837
00:46:17,160 --> 00:46:19,600
Speaker 1: My favorite TV show uses it. It's got to be real,

838
00:46:20,280 --> 00:46:22,719
Speaker 1: but on on some like level, it's still kind of good.

839
00:46:22,760 --> 00:46:25,040
Speaker 1: Gets into you, it still affects you. I agree. I

840
00:46:25,040 --> 00:46:27,000
Speaker 1: mean again, I think this is this is pointing out

841
00:46:27,000 --> 00:46:29,880
Speaker 1: some of the weaknesses and how Alcam's razor is often applied.

842
00:46:29,960 --> 00:46:33,279
Speaker 1: It's like people think they're applying some kind of objective

843
00:46:33,320 --> 00:46:35,719
Speaker 1: criterion when really they're just kind of going with their

844
00:46:35,760 --> 00:46:40,040
Speaker 1: gut about like what what feels more plausible? Uh. And

845
00:46:40,040 --> 00:46:42,520
Speaker 1: and that's something Ball kind of hammers home at the

846
00:46:42,600 --> 00:46:44,799
Speaker 1: end when he writes quote, but this is all just

847
00:46:44,920 --> 00:46:48,840
Speaker 1: special pleading. Acam's razor was never meant for pairing nature

848
00:46:48,880 --> 00:46:53,360
Speaker 1: down to some beautiful, parsimonious core of truth. Because science

849
00:46:53,440 --> 00:46:56,920
Speaker 1: is so difficult and messy, the allure of a philosophical

850
00:46:56,960 --> 00:47:00,239
Speaker 1: tool for clearing a path or pruning the thickets is obvious. Yes,

851
00:47:00,800 --> 00:47:04,080
Speaker 1: in the readiness to find spurious applications of Akham's razors

852
00:47:04,200 --> 00:47:06,920
Speaker 1: in the history of science, or to enlist, dismiss, or

853
00:47:06,960 --> 00:47:10,200
Speaker 1: reshape the razor at will to shore up their preferences.

854
00:47:10,640 --> 00:47:14,400
Speaker 1: Scientists reveal their seduction by this vision, but they should

855
00:47:14,400 --> 00:47:17,800
Speaker 1: resist it. The value of keeping assumptions to a minimum

856
00:47:17,880 --> 00:47:23,080
Speaker 1: is cognitive not ontological. It helps you think a theory

857
00:47:23,200 --> 00:47:25,839
Speaker 1: is not better if it is simpler, but it might

858
00:47:25,920 --> 00:47:29,879
Speaker 1: well be more useful, and that counts for much more. Yeah,

859
00:47:29,960 --> 00:47:32,759
Speaker 1: that's well put. It helps us think, read it, and

860
00:47:32,880 --> 00:47:35,600
Speaker 1: help us explain the world. Right, there's no way to

861
00:47:35,760 --> 00:47:38,719
Speaker 1: show that well. Actually, so we're about to get into

862
00:47:38,880 --> 00:47:41,040
Speaker 1: somebody who says that there may be cases where you

863
00:47:41,040 --> 00:47:45,000
Speaker 1: can show simpler theories are objectively more true. But but

864
00:47:45,160 --> 00:47:47,120
Speaker 1: Ball argues that at least most of the time in

865
00:47:47,239 --> 00:47:50,320
Speaker 1: science and real competing theories in the history of science,

866
00:47:50,680 --> 00:47:54,160
Speaker 1: it's not that simpler theories are more true or explain

867
00:47:54,280 --> 00:47:57,680
Speaker 1: reality better. They're just easier to get your head around

868
00:47:57,760 --> 00:48:00,200
Speaker 1: and test. All right, on that note, we're gonna take

869
00:48:00,200 --> 00:48:02,400
Speaker 1: one more break, but we will be right back with

870
00:48:02,480 --> 00:48:09,440
Speaker 1: further discussion of the razor. Alright, we're back, All right.

871
00:48:09,440 --> 00:48:11,840
Speaker 1: There's one more article about Akham's razor that I found

872
00:48:11,880 --> 00:48:15,520
Speaker 1: really interesting, very useful, and it is called why is

873
00:48:15,600 --> 00:48:19,440
Speaker 1: Simpler Better? This was published in Eon by Elliott Sober,

874
00:48:19,480 --> 00:48:23,120
Speaker 1: who is a professor of philosophy at the University of Wisconsin, Madison,

875
00:48:23,560 --> 00:48:26,040
Speaker 1: and he's published a lot on the philosophy of science,

876
00:48:26,040 --> 00:48:29,719
Speaker 1: specifically as it applies to biology and natural selection, and

877
00:48:29,800 --> 00:48:32,920
Speaker 1: he wrote a book on the subject of Akham's razor. Uh.

878
00:48:33,000 --> 00:48:35,360
Speaker 1: So he starts off, I think this is kind of

879
00:48:35,400 --> 00:48:39,400
Speaker 1: interesting talking about simplicity and complexity and art. Could you

880
00:48:39,400 --> 00:48:43,120
Speaker 1: possibly have a norm that one is always better than

881
00:48:43,160 --> 00:48:45,839
Speaker 1: the other? I mean that seems kind of strange, right,

882
00:48:45,880 --> 00:48:48,480
Speaker 1: Like we love simple art and we love complex art,

883
00:48:48,719 --> 00:48:50,879
Speaker 1: and it would be strange to find a person who

884
00:48:51,000 --> 00:48:54,120
Speaker 1: just wants one or the other. Yeah, I mean this

885
00:48:54,200 --> 00:48:58,040
Speaker 1: makes me think of of movie posters. I don't know,

886
00:48:58,200 --> 00:48:59,759
Speaker 1: you probably remember it seems like it was a few

887
00:48:59,840 --> 00:49:04,160
Speaker 1: year is back. The big craze for a while was

888
00:49:04,200 --> 00:49:07,400
Speaker 1: that the designers would come up with a super simplistic

889
00:49:07,840 --> 00:49:11,120
Speaker 1: movie poster for classic film or a you know, a

890
00:49:11,160 --> 00:49:14,480
Speaker 1: fan favorite film. And it was really fun for a while.

891
00:49:15,080 --> 00:49:17,560
Speaker 1: And uh and but then it kind of overstate it's welcome,

892
00:49:17,680 --> 00:49:19,960
Speaker 1: you know, and and and it just became kind of,

893
00:49:20,040 --> 00:49:22,239
Speaker 1: at least to me anyway, kind of kind of irritating

894
00:49:22,239 --> 00:49:24,200
Speaker 1: to even look at. You're like, no, I don't don't

895
00:49:24,200 --> 00:49:26,720
Speaker 1: want to see like this film reduced to this ultra

896
00:49:26,920 --> 00:49:30,000
Speaker 1: simplistic symbol. I know exactly what you're talking about. And

897
00:49:30,040 --> 00:49:32,080
Speaker 1: I think there was a counter reaction. Yeah, because then

898
00:49:32,120 --> 00:49:34,279
Speaker 1: you started to see a lot of graphic design for

899
00:49:34,760 --> 00:49:37,600
Speaker 1: redoing old movies with new posters in the kind of

900
00:49:37,640 --> 00:49:40,760
Speaker 1: Return of the Jedi stuff where there's a bunch of stuff,

901
00:49:40,760 --> 00:49:42,799
Speaker 1: there's like a bunch of people on the poster and

902
00:49:42,920 --> 00:49:45,440
Speaker 1: things happening. Yeah, or that it's just kind of like

903
00:49:45,480 --> 00:49:49,319
Speaker 1: a geometric explosion of things, you know. Uh so, yeah,

904
00:49:49,360 --> 00:49:52,759
Speaker 1: you so saw the pendulum swing both ways. But in general, yeah,

905
00:49:52,880 --> 00:49:54,759
Speaker 1: I feel like it's that way in art. I mean,

906
00:49:54,840 --> 00:49:57,400
Speaker 1: I think we can all point to specific examples in

907
00:49:57,400 --> 00:49:59,399
Speaker 1: our own life where here's something we like that it's

908
00:49:59,520 --> 00:50:02,759
Speaker 1: very very tight and neat and minimalists. Maybe it's even

909
00:50:02,800 --> 00:50:08,040
Speaker 1: like a musical argument. Yeah, I love like minimalist ambient recordings,

910
00:50:08,080 --> 00:50:10,759
Speaker 1: but I'm also the type of person who enjoys uh

911
00:50:10,920 --> 00:50:16,080
Speaker 1: cacophonist recordings and complex recordings, and likewise with visual arts,

912
00:50:16,120 --> 00:50:19,920
Speaker 1: likewise with you know, film, TV and other mediums you

913
00:50:20,160 --> 00:50:23,799
Speaker 1: you like hugely layered like mixed tracks and stuff. Yeah. Yeah,

914
00:50:24,120 --> 00:50:27,520
Speaker 1: but then I also like, uh, you know, I love

915
00:50:27,760 --> 00:50:29,279
Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't, I don't know that it

916
00:50:29,280 --> 00:50:31,640
Speaker 1: gets kind of complicated, right, because even something that is

917
00:50:31,719 --> 00:50:35,640
Speaker 1: very minimalist can be of course very complicated and layered. Uh.

918
00:50:36,120 --> 00:50:39,800
Speaker 1: But but yeah, I think everybody is gonna everybody's taste

919
00:50:39,800 --> 00:50:42,040
Speaker 1: pendulum is going to swing both ways there. But that's

920
00:50:42,040 --> 00:50:44,239
Speaker 1: the world of art though, right, I mean, so that's

921
00:50:44,280 --> 00:50:47,640
Speaker 1: one thing. That's the world of human creation. Um. And

922
00:50:47,760 --> 00:50:52,160
Speaker 1: sometimes those creations are are made, uh to mimic nature,

923
00:50:52,160 --> 00:50:54,960
Speaker 1: but they are not necessarily nature itself. Right, Yes, And

924
00:50:55,120 --> 00:50:57,480
Speaker 1: I think you can apply something similar to science. So

925
00:50:57,840 --> 00:50:59,600
Speaker 1: some of what Sober is going to write in this

926
00:50:59,680 --> 00:51:02,239
Speaker 1: article mirrors what we were just talking about with Ball.

927
00:51:02,320 --> 00:51:05,000
Speaker 1: Like he he starts off by saying, Okay, it's clear

928
00:51:05,120 --> 00:51:09,120
Speaker 1: that simpler theories have some qualities that are good. They're

929
00:51:09,160 --> 00:51:13,719
Speaker 1: easier to understand, they're easier to remember, they're easier to test, uh,

930
00:51:13,760 --> 00:51:16,799
Speaker 1: And of course in just an aesthetic sense, they can

931
00:51:16,840 --> 00:51:19,680
Speaker 1: be more beautiful. But he says that the real problem

932
00:51:19,719 --> 00:51:21,640
Speaker 1: comes in when you're trying to figure out how good

933
00:51:21,760 --> 00:51:24,799
Speaker 1: is a theory for telling you what's true? You know,

934
00:51:24,880 --> 00:51:27,800
Speaker 1: how well does it predict things that you will encounter

935
00:51:27,840 --> 00:51:31,200
Speaker 1: in the world. Some pasta scientific thinkers have tried to

936
00:51:31,200 --> 00:51:35,160
Speaker 1: come up with reasons why. Yeah, it's like simplicity is

937
00:51:35,200 --> 00:51:38,080
Speaker 1: actually better. It actually predicts predicts the world better. And

938
00:51:38,120 --> 00:51:41,719
Speaker 1: a lot of these justifications were theological in nature. Uh.

939
00:51:41,920 --> 00:51:44,920
Speaker 1: Like for example, in Newton and talking about why he

940
00:51:44,960 --> 00:51:49,279
Speaker 1: prefers simpler theories, wrote quote to choose those constructions which,

941
00:51:49,320 --> 00:51:52,960
Speaker 1: without straining, reduced things to the greatest simplicity. Uh. The

942
00:51:53,000 --> 00:51:55,799
Speaker 1: reason of this is that truth is ever to be

943
00:51:55,840 --> 00:51:59,360
Speaker 1: found in simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion

944
00:51:59,400 --> 00:52:02,080
Speaker 1: of things. It is the perfection of God's works that

945
00:52:02,160 --> 00:52:05,040
Speaker 1: they are all done with the greatest simplicity. He is

946
00:52:05,080 --> 00:52:08,120
Speaker 1: the God of order and not of confusion. And therefore,

947
00:52:08,400 --> 00:52:10,920
Speaker 1: as they that would understand the frame of the world

948
00:52:11,040 --> 00:52:14,560
Speaker 1: must endeavor to reduce their knowledge to all possible simplicity.

949
00:52:14,920 --> 00:52:17,880
Speaker 1: So it must be in seeking to understand these visions.

950
00:52:18,239 --> 00:52:20,040
Speaker 1: So again, I mean, I would say that's fine to

951
00:52:20,080 --> 00:52:23,120
Speaker 1: believe that. That's not a scientific reason for believing things

952
00:52:23,160 --> 00:52:25,680
Speaker 1: that simpler things are more likely to be true. Right,

953
00:52:25,800 --> 00:52:27,680
Speaker 1: had to fall back on the idea that we have

954
00:52:27,800 --> 00:52:32,120
Speaker 1: a lawful, good God as opposed to a chaotic good God. Right,

955
00:52:32,280 --> 00:52:34,200
Speaker 1: I mean, it would only be a bad God that

956
00:52:34,239 --> 00:52:37,560
Speaker 1: would allow more complex explanations to be correct. And so

957
00:52:37,719 --> 00:52:41,360
Speaker 1: were actually says there are some cases today, uh that

958
00:52:41,520 --> 00:52:45,320
Speaker 1: can help us know when a model is objectively more accurate,

959
00:52:45,400 --> 00:52:48,200
Speaker 1: like modern statistical methods, there are some ways that you

960
00:52:48,239 --> 00:52:53,200
Speaker 1: can reduce theories to mathematical advantage, at least roughly, and

961
00:52:53,320 --> 00:52:56,080
Speaker 1: that in these cases there there are times where you

962
00:52:56,080 --> 00:52:59,960
Speaker 1: can show simpler is actually better. Uh. He argues, there

963
00:53:00,040 --> 00:53:03,600
Speaker 1: reparadigms in which Occam's razor holds true, and so the

964
00:53:03,640 --> 00:53:08,760
Speaker 1: first one is that sometimes simpler theories actually have higher probabilities.

965
00:53:09,680 --> 00:53:13,960
Speaker 1: He invokes the medical adage here, don't chase zebras. This

966
00:53:14,040 --> 00:53:16,080
Speaker 1: is this comes from the idea of you know, when

967
00:53:16,080 --> 00:53:19,600
Speaker 1: you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras. I've also heard

968
00:53:19,600 --> 00:53:23,520
Speaker 1: that as unicorns. As another analogy, if you hear footsteps

969
00:53:23,520 --> 00:53:25,320
Speaker 1: coming down the hall, you can have a couple of

970
00:53:25,320 --> 00:53:28,479
Speaker 1: different hypotheses. It's a human walking down the hall, or

971
00:53:28,560 --> 00:53:31,480
Speaker 1: it's a RoboCop walking down the hall, which one is

972
00:53:31,480 --> 00:53:33,640
Speaker 1: going to be correct more often, Well, it's going to

973
00:53:33,719 --> 00:53:37,400
Speaker 1: be a human. It could either conceivably be somebody in

974
00:53:37,440 --> 00:53:41,319
Speaker 1: a RoboCup cost him, but the chances of that are

975
00:53:41,320 --> 00:53:43,480
Speaker 1: pretty slimp. I mean, unless you like are in a

976
00:53:43,560 --> 00:53:46,560
Speaker 1: RoboCop factory or something. It's going to be a human

977
00:53:46,600 --> 00:53:49,560
Speaker 1: way more often, And the same goes in diagnosing diseases.

978
00:53:49,600 --> 00:53:52,840
Speaker 1: If you observe a set of symptoms in patient history

979
00:53:52,960 --> 00:53:56,160
Speaker 1: that are equally likely to predict a common disease and

980
00:53:56,200 --> 00:53:59,080
Speaker 1: a rare disease, pick the common one, you're going to

981
00:53:59,160 --> 00:54:01,960
Speaker 1: be correct more often than if you always pick the

982
00:54:02,040 --> 00:54:04,560
Speaker 1: rare one. Right. Um. You know this also brings me

983
00:54:04,600 --> 00:54:07,880
Speaker 1: back to the serial killer example. You know, like, what

984
00:54:07,880 --> 00:54:10,560
Speaker 1: what is more more likely though that it's someone that

985
00:54:10,520 --> 00:54:13,040
Speaker 1: the individual new, or it is a random killing by

986
00:54:13,040 --> 00:54:15,479
Speaker 1: a serial murder. You know, unless there is a serial

987
00:54:15,560 --> 00:54:18,840
Speaker 1: murder active in the area, which raises that that the

988
00:54:18,920 --> 00:54:22,360
Speaker 1: chances for that to be true, but by a considerable margin. Uh,

989
00:54:22,400 --> 00:54:25,080
Speaker 1: it's going to remain a zebra. Now a unicorn, but

990
00:54:25,160 --> 00:54:28,719
Speaker 1: a zebra exactly unless you have independent evidence pointing to

991
00:54:28,760 --> 00:54:31,400
Speaker 1: that as a superior hypothesis. There's no reason to go

992
00:54:31,520 --> 00:54:36,120
Speaker 1: to a rare phenomenon that would explain things equally. Well, yeah,

993
00:54:36,280 --> 00:54:38,000
Speaker 1: so I know it seems like there are enough podcasts

994
00:54:38,000 --> 00:54:40,960
Speaker 1: about serial murders. It might seem like there are more

995
00:54:40,960 --> 00:54:42,840
Speaker 1: of them out there than there are. Well, there you

996
00:54:42,840 --> 00:54:46,840
Speaker 1: get into some cognitive biases from Yeah, the availability heuristic

997
00:54:46,920 --> 00:54:50,759
Speaker 1: kicks in But of course, another question is, like, how

998
00:54:50,800 --> 00:54:53,440
Speaker 1: often does a thorough review actually put you in the

999
00:54:53,520 --> 00:54:57,120
Speaker 1: situation where two things explain what you see equally well,

1000
00:54:57,239 --> 00:55:01,839
Speaker 1: like truly equally well. One's rare and one's comm But

1001
00:55:01,840 --> 00:55:04,440
Speaker 1: but so Sober says that you've got this concept he

1002
00:55:04,480 --> 00:55:08,400
Speaker 1: calls the razor of silence, and and the basic explanation

1003
00:55:08,400 --> 00:55:11,160
Speaker 1: of this is that if you've got evidence that A

1004
00:55:11,560 --> 00:55:14,480
Speaker 1: is the cause of something and no evidence that B

1005
00:55:14,880 --> 00:55:18,760
Speaker 1: is the cause of something, then A alone is statistically

1006
00:55:18,800 --> 00:55:22,600
Speaker 1: a better explanation than A and B together. This goes

1007
00:55:22,640 --> 00:55:25,120
Speaker 1: back to the stacking of explanations that we were talking

1008
00:55:25,160 --> 00:55:27,960
Speaker 1: about earlier, Like, if you've got an explanation that already

1009
00:55:27,960 --> 00:55:33,440
Speaker 1: explains everything, there is no justification for adding additional explanations

1010
00:55:33,440 --> 00:55:35,439
Speaker 1: on top of it. That you don't need to add

1011
00:55:35,480 --> 00:55:38,239
Speaker 1: the angels pushing the planets right, Well, let's come back

1012
00:55:38,280 --> 00:55:41,879
Speaker 1: to the murder scenario. How do we apply this forensically? Uh? Well,

1013
00:55:42,120 --> 00:55:44,279
Speaker 1: as so we're actually I think says something kind of

1014
00:55:44,280 --> 00:55:47,080
Speaker 1: like this, But like, if you have clear evidence of

1015
00:55:47,120 --> 00:55:49,920
Speaker 1: one cause of death on somebody, you don't need to

1016
00:55:49,960 --> 00:55:53,440
Speaker 1: assume extra causes of death stacking on top of it

1017
00:55:53,880 --> 00:55:56,400
Speaker 1: without direct evidence of them as well. So if you

1018
00:55:56,440 --> 00:55:59,480
Speaker 1: find like a you know, a body, I don't know,

1019
00:55:59,520 --> 00:56:02,120
Speaker 1: a body the bottom of a cliff and they're dead,

1020
00:56:02,239 --> 00:56:04,400
Speaker 1: you can assume that it was falling off the cliff

1021
00:56:04,440 --> 00:56:06,680
Speaker 1: that killed them. You don't need to also assume that

1022
00:56:06,719 --> 00:56:09,480
Speaker 1: they were poisoned or something. King unless you know, you

1023
00:56:09,480 --> 00:56:12,240
Speaker 1: do blood talks and then it comes back with poison.

1024
00:56:12,320 --> 00:56:14,640
Speaker 1: You can't assume it then. But there's no reason to

1025
00:56:14,640 --> 00:56:19,040
Speaker 1: start stacking on additional assumptions. Now there's another way that

1026
00:56:19,120 --> 00:56:23,120
Speaker 1: sober says sometimes OCAM's razer actually does hold true. It

1027
00:56:23,120 --> 00:56:26,640
Speaker 1: it's sometimes simpler explanations are better, and it's simply that

1028
00:56:26,760 --> 00:56:31,279
Speaker 1: sometimes simpler theories are better supported by observations. Uh. He

1029
00:56:31,320 --> 00:56:33,880
Speaker 1: gives this great example. Suppose all the lights on your

1030
00:56:33,880 --> 00:56:38,040
Speaker 1: street go out. You could have two competing hypotheses. First

1031
00:56:38,080 --> 00:56:42,000
Speaker 1: one something happened at the power plant and that influenced

1032
00:56:42,000 --> 00:56:44,200
Speaker 1: what happened to all the lights in the neighborhood, or

1033
00:56:44,200 --> 00:56:47,480
Speaker 1: maybe there's a down power line something like that. The

1034
00:56:47,560 --> 00:56:50,680
Speaker 1: other one, something happened to all of the light bulbs

1035
00:56:50,760 --> 00:56:55,560
Speaker 1: at the same time. Now, these would both explain the observations, right,

1036
00:56:56,400 --> 00:56:59,799
Speaker 1: Like either either all of the light bulbs suddenly went

1037
00:56:59,840 --> 00:57:02,799
Speaker 1: out on their own independently, just coincidentally, all at the

1038
00:57:02,800 --> 00:57:05,760
Speaker 1: same time, or there's something happened with the power supply

1039
00:57:05,920 --> 00:57:09,000
Speaker 1: to the whole neighborhood. Sober argues, based on the work

1040
00:57:09,000 --> 00:57:12,239
Speaker 1: of the philosopher Hans Reichenbach, that in this case you

1041
00:57:12,280 --> 00:57:15,880
Speaker 1: can actually show mathematically that the evidence for the first

1042
00:57:16,080 --> 00:57:19,680
Speaker 1: for the power plant hypothesis is stronger, just based on

1043
00:57:19,720 --> 00:57:23,200
Speaker 1: the fact that it's simpler. Uh. And a similar example

1044
00:57:23,240 --> 00:57:26,760
Speaker 1: in real science look at common descent in biology. So

1045
00:57:26,920 --> 00:57:30,480
Speaker 1: based on the evidence of massive amounts of genetic code

1046
00:57:30,560 --> 00:57:34,680
Speaker 1: shared by all living things today, people usually say, okay,

1047
00:57:34,720 --> 00:57:37,440
Speaker 1: that that's evidence of common descent. We all share a

1048
00:57:37,440 --> 00:57:42,000
Speaker 1: common ancestor, we all inherit some common genetic code. Now

1049
00:57:42,000 --> 00:57:44,520
Speaker 1: you could also say, well, maybe all living things on

1050
00:57:44,560 --> 00:57:47,880
Speaker 1: Earth have different ancestors and they just happened by coincidence

1051
00:57:47,960 --> 00:57:52,040
Speaker 1: to have overlapping strings of genetic code. That would require

1052
00:57:52,080 --> 00:57:55,760
Speaker 1: a lot of strange coincidences. So the evidence actually favors

1053
00:57:55,800 --> 00:57:58,520
Speaker 1: common descent, just like it favors a power outage over

1054
00:57:58,600 --> 00:58:03,080
Speaker 1: hundreds of simultaneous light bulb failures. So a serial killer

1055
00:58:03,160 --> 00:58:06,760
Speaker 1: example of this might be, oh man, what's happening in

1056
00:58:06,800 --> 00:58:08,920
Speaker 1: the dark corners of your brain today, Rob, I don't know,

1057
00:58:08,920 --> 00:58:10,920
Speaker 1: I just keep coming back to it, I guess. But okay,

1058
00:58:11,000 --> 00:58:13,960
Speaker 1: so one person. So if like people, they're all these

1059
00:58:13,960 --> 00:58:16,680
Speaker 1: dead people and they all have say a death head,

1060
00:58:16,760 --> 00:58:21,000
Speaker 1: moth um, what was a caterpillar? Oh? Yes, yes, yes, yes?

1061
00:58:21,120 --> 00:58:23,959
Speaker 1: Or was it a cocoon? I can't recall off hand

1062
00:58:24,240 --> 00:58:26,080
Speaker 1: and from silence to the lamps. Yeah, they've got like

1063
00:58:26,120 --> 00:58:29,000
Speaker 1: a moth cocoon in their mouth or something. So perhaps

1064
00:58:29,400 --> 00:58:32,240
Speaker 1: they just happened to each individually wind up with one

1065
00:58:32,240 --> 00:58:34,680
Speaker 1: in their mouth, like somebody accidentally eight one one in

1066
00:58:34,680 --> 00:58:36,680
Speaker 1: the salad bar. Another one was like looking up and

1067
00:58:36,720 --> 00:58:38,760
Speaker 1: it fell out of a tree, because one had escaped

1068
00:58:38,800 --> 00:58:41,280
Speaker 1: from a private collection, was living in a tree. You

1069
00:58:41,280 --> 00:58:44,720
Speaker 1: could have sort of independent explanations for why each of

1070
00:58:44,720 --> 00:58:47,520
Speaker 1: these occurred. Or the other possibility is somebody's killing them

1071
00:58:47,520 --> 00:58:49,640
Speaker 1: and putting them in their throats. Right, the one common

1072
00:58:49,680 --> 00:58:53,720
Speaker 1: explanation actually explains observations better than assuming a whole bunch

1073
00:58:53,760 --> 00:58:56,320
Speaker 1: of strange coincidence. Yes, and then we got the third

1074
00:58:56,320 --> 00:58:59,320
Speaker 1: paradigm Sober gets into, which is that he says, sometimes

1075
00:58:59,400 --> 00:59:02,520
Speaker 1: the simplicity of a model is relevant to estimating its

1076
00:59:02,520 --> 00:59:06,000
Speaker 1: predictive accuracy. So what a good theories do well? They

1077
00:59:06,040 --> 00:59:08,680
Speaker 1: make accurate predictions about things we don't know yet. They

1078
00:59:08,680 --> 00:59:13,400
Speaker 1: either accurately predict future measurements or outcomes or discoveries. Does

1079
00:59:13,400 --> 00:59:16,439
Speaker 1: acams Raiser have anything to say here? Sober says yes,

1080
00:59:16,680 --> 00:59:21,000
Speaker 1: Sometimes simplicity affects our best guesses about how accurate a

1081
00:59:21,040 --> 00:59:23,880
Speaker 1: new theory will be, and he cites the work of

1082
00:59:23,920 --> 00:59:28,520
Speaker 1: a Japanese statistician named Hiratuga Akayiki, who did important work

1083
00:59:28,520 --> 00:59:31,800
Speaker 1: in a field called model selection theory. This means how

1084
00:59:31,840 --> 00:59:34,200
Speaker 1: to judge the strength of a new model or theory

1085
00:59:34,280 --> 00:59:37,040
Speaker 1: before it has had time to be tested in the field,

1086
00:59:37,840 --> 00:59:42,760
Speaker 1: and a model evaluation system called the Akayiki information criterion

1087
00:59:43,120 --> 00:59:45,080
Speaker 1: says that you can predict how good a new model

1088
00:59:45,160 --> 00:59:47,800
Speaker 1: or theory will be by two measures, how well it

1089
00:59:47,840 --> 00:59:51,120
Speaker 1: fits old or existing data. Obviously, better fits are better,

1090
00:59:51,480 --> 00:59:55,000
Speaker 1: and then how simple it is Simpler models are better. Uh.

1091
00:59:55,040 --> 00:59:59,320
Speaker 1: Simplicity is evaluated by quote the number of adjustable parameters

1092
00:59:59,360 --> 01:00:02,280
Speaker 1: and having few or is better. Now. Sober gives an

1093
01:00:02,280 --> 01:00:04,800
Speaker 1: analysis of why this is the case, using an example

1094
01:00:04,880 --> 01:00:07,320
Speaker 1: of trying to estimate the height of plants in a

1095
01:00:07,360 --> 01:00:10,680
Speaker 1: corn field based on previous random samplings of the fields.

1096
01:00:10,920 --> 01:00:12,960
Speaker 1: I'm not going to get down into all the details

1097
01:00:12,960 --> 01:00:14,760
Speaker 1: of this, but if you want a deeper understanding of

1098
01:00:14,760 --> 01:00:17,160
Speaker 1: this one, i'd recommend looking up the article that. The

1099
01:00:17,320 --> 01:00:20,520
Speaker 1: short version is that in some situations, depending on a

1100
01:00:20,600 --> 01:00:23,280
Speaker 1: number of assumptions about what types of models and data

1101
01:00:23,320 --> 01:00:26,240
Speaker 1: you're dealing with, simplicity of a model is actually a

1102
01:00:26,240 --> 01:00:29,160
Speaker 1: good predictor of how well future data will conform to

1103
01:00:29,240 --> 01:00:32,280
Speaker 1: that model. And it's just a fact about statistics. The

1104
01:00:32,360 --> 01:00:35,680
Speaker 1: sorcery of average is not a fact about individual cases

1105
01:00:35,720 --> 01:00:38,640
Speaker 1: on the ground. Now, he concludes by saying that these

1106
01:00:38,640 --> 01:00:42,800
Speaker 1: three paradigms have something uh in common and quote whether

1107
01:00:42,840 --> 01:00:45,440
Speaker 1: a given problem fits into any of them depends on

1108
01:00:45,520 --> 01:00:50,280
Speaker 1: empirical assumptions about the problem. Those assumptions might be true

1109
01:00:50,280 --> 01:00:53,720
Speaker 1: of some problems but false of others. Although parsimony is

1110
01:00:53,760 --> 01:00:57,640
Speaker 1: demonstrably relevant in forming judgments about what the world is like,

1111
01:00:58,080 --> 01:01:02,120
Speaker 1: there is, in the end no un conditional and presupposition

1112
01:01:02,200 --> 01:01:07,080
Speaker 1: less justification for Ockham's razor. Uh So that's tough, right,

1113
01:01:07,080 --> 01:01:09,680
Speaker 1: Like Ockham's razor is not a tool you can apply

1114
01:01:09,760 --> 01:01:12,760
Speaker 1: to every situation to get closer to the truth. It's

1115
01:01:12,760 --> 01:01:17,800
Speaker 1: a tool that is useful sometimes for some types of judgment,

1116
01:01:18,200 --> 01:01:21,360
Speaker 1: and the real difficulty is recognizing when you're in one

1117
01:01:21,400 --> 01:01:24,480
Speaker 1: of those situations in which it's useful or one of

1118
01:01:24,480 --> 01:01:27,680
Speaker 1: those situations where it's actually just a logical red herring.

1119
01:01:28,600 --> 01:01:31,000
Speaker 1: So really it kind of comes back to, uh, you know,

1120
01:01:31,080 --> 01:01:32,880
Speaker 1: we we were talking about Sagan at the beginning of

1121
01:01:32,920 --> 01:01:34,640
Speaker 1: this and how he said, this is one of the

1122
01:01:34,680 --> 01:01:38,080
Speaker 1: tools in your skeptics tool chest. And the thing about

1123
01:01:38,080 --> 01:01:40,080
Speaker 1: a tool chest is that you have more than one

1124
01:01:40,080 --> 01:01:44,240
Speaker 1: tool in there. And the screwdriver cannot be used for everything, right,

1125
01:01:44,320 --> 01:01:45,880
Speaker 1: I mean, you can try. It's useful for a lot

1126
01:01:45,920 --> 01:01:48,720
Speaker 1: of things, uh, and certainly very useful for screws, but

1127
01:01:48,720 --> 01:01:51,800
Speaker 1: there's gonna be a time when you're gonna have to

1128
01:01:51,800 --> 01:01:54,320
Speaker 1: pull out another tool to deal with the problem. And

1129
01:01:54,320 --> 01:01:56,640
Speaker 1: there are gonna be plenty of cases you will encounter

1130
01:01:56,680 --> 01:01:59,400
Speaker 1: We're trying to use the skeptical tool of Akham's razor

1131
01:01:59,520 --> 01:02:01,760
Speaker 1: is like trying to clean out your electrical socket with

1132
01:02:01,760 --> 01:02:05,280
Speaker 1: the screwdriver. You're just it's gonna steer you astray. And

1133
01:02:05,320 --> 01:02:07,440
Speaker 1: I'm very sorry that in the end here we don't

1134
01:02:07,520 --> 01:02:10,320
Speaker 1: have like a clean rule to just guide you like

1135
01:02:10,360 --> 01:02:12,040
Speaker 1: this is when you can use it, this is when

1136
01:02:12,080 --> 01:02:14,400
Speaker 1: you can't. I think it comes down to, I mean,

1137
01:02:14,560 --> 01:02:17,640
Speaker 1: Sober has some useful things to say. They're about like

1138
01:02:17,680 --> 01:02:21,440
Speaker 1: types of situations where it is helpful. But yeah, there there,

1139
01:02:21,560 --> 01:02:24,000
Speaker 1: there's I'm sorry, there's not just like an easy rule

1140
01:02:24,000 --> 01:02:27,000
Speaker 1: of thumb for when they when the razor will be helpful. Yeah.

1141
01:02:27,000 --> 01:02:29,160
Speaker 1: I mean, ultimately, it is a tool that was not

1142
01:02:29,640 --> 01:02:31,919
Speaker 1: plucked out of the sky, but it was plucked out

1143
01:02:31,960 --> 01:02:35,440
Speaker 1: of human reasoning and uh and and human problem solving.

1144
01:02:36,120 --> 01:02:38,600
Speaker 1: By the way, coming back to the name of the Rose,

1145
01:02:39,040 --> 01:02:41,640
Speaker 1: I want to point out that there is apparently a

1146
01:02:42,120 --> 01:02:47,480
Speaker 1: highly regarded Spanish seven eight bit computer game based on

1147
01:02:47,560 --> 01:02:50,520
Speaker 1: the name of the road. Yeah, it's a it's titled

1148
01:02:50,560 --> 01:02:53,840
Speaker 1: The Abbey of the Crime, which was actually uh and

1149
01:02:53,920 --> 01:02:56,080
Speaker 1: they conceived it as an adaptation of the name of

1150
01:02:56,080 --> 01:02:58,480
Speaker 1: the Rose, but they were unable to secure permission to

1151
01:02:58,560 --> 01:03:01,320
Speaker 1: do so. And uh they in fact, I read that

1152
01:03:01,320 --> 01:03:03,160
Speaker 1: they didn't even hear back from Echo. They tried to

1153
01:03:03,200 --> 01:03:04,920
Speaker 1: get a hut of them and they couldn't get hold

1154
01:03:04,960 --> 01:03:07,560
Speaker 1: of it. And try to imagine the umberto Echo essay

1155
01:03:07,600 --> 01:03:10,280
Speaker 1: about this video game when he tries to play it,

1156
01:03:11,720 --> 01:03:15,240
Speaker 1: that would be good. Um, but basically the Abbey of

1157
01:03:15,280 --> 01:03:17,720
Speaker 1: the Crime. The title they went with was apparently like

1158
01:03:17,760 --> 01:03:20,280
Speaker 1: the working title for the Name of the Rose at

1159
01:03:20,320 --> 01:03:23,440
Speaker 1: one point. Um, so they released it under that name,

1160
01:03:23,440 --> 01:03:26,280
Speaker 1: and instead of having the main character be William of Baskerville,

1161
01:03:26,400 --> 01:03:29,760
Speaker 1: the main character is William of Alcolm and uh. And

1162
01:03:29,920 --> 01:03:32,160
Speaker 1: I thought that was pretty much the into it. You know,

1163
01:03:32,200 --> 01:03:34,200
Speaker 1: you can look up the footage of the game and all.

1164
01:03:34,440 --> 01:03:37,360
Speaker 1: But then I just learned for the first time this

1165
01:03:37,440 --> 01:03:40,680
Speaker 1: may be more common knowledge for everyone else out there. Um,

1166
01:03:41,600 --> 01:03:43,400
Speaker 1: there is a remake of it like they did, like

1167
01:03:43,440 --> 01:03:47,880
Speaker 1: a revamped version of it with improved but nicely pixelated graphics. Um,

1168
01:03:48,480 --> 01:03:51,760
Speaker 1: the Abbey of the Crime Extensive, which you can get

1169
01:03:51,800 --> 01:03:54,560
Speaker 1: on Steam. Apparently. I don't really do Steam, so I

1170
01:03:54,560 --> 01:03:56,840
Speaker 1: don't really know how it works. But um yeah, it's

1171
01:03:56,880 --> 01:04:00,320
Speaker 1: listed on there. Came out and it looks really cool,

1172
01:04:00,440 --> 01:04:03,120
Speaker 1: like the For instance, now the the updated sprites the

1173
01:04:03,120 --> 01:04:07,000
Speaker 1: little characters in the game, they look so much like

1174
01:04:07,120 --> 01:04:10,480
Speaker 1: the actors in the original film adaptation to the Name

1175
01:04:10,480 --> 01:04:14,320
Speaker 1: of Rose, Like it's a little Sean Connery and Christians Later. Yeah,

1176
01:04:14,320 --> 01:04:16,919
Speaker 1: I don't know if they got permission to use their likenesses. Um,

1177
01:04:17,040 --> 01:04:19,040
Speaker 1: how close. Does they have to be in eight bits?

1178
01:04:19,280 --> 01:04:23,280
Speaker 1: I don't know. That's that's a great question. But but

1179
01:04:23,480 --> 01:04:25,040
Speaker 1: my other question is just I would like to ask

1180
01:04:25,280 --> 01:04:28,400
Speaker 1: listeners out there have if you've played this, please let

1181
01:04:28,440 --> 01:04:30,480
Speaker 1: me know how it is. I'm very curious, Not that

1182
01:04:30,520 --> 01:04:32,840
Speaker 1: I think I will actually play it for myself, but

1183
01:04:32,920 --> 01:04:36,640
Speaker 1: I just I'm genuinely, genuinely interested in, uh in what

1184
01:04:36,920 --> 01:04:39,680
Speaker 1: a video game adaptation to the Name of the Rose is. Like.

1185
01:04:39,840 --> 01:04:41,640
Speaker 1: If you know the solution at the end of the book,

1186
01:04:41,680 --> 01:04:44,600
Speaker 1: can you automatically beat the game immediately? Like yeah? Or

1187
01:04:44,640 --> 01:04:48,160
Speaker 1: are there different solutions? I don't know, Uh, you know,

1188
01:04:48,320 --> 01:04:50,400
Speaker 1: is it a different murder each time? That would be crazy?

1189
01:04:50,520 --> 01:04:53,880
Speaker 1: Arrives at the abbey, speaks to the abbot immediately says

1190
01:04:53,920 --> 01:04:57,200
Speaker 1: I got something to lay on you. Is Acam's razor

1191
01:04:57,440 --> 01:05:00,040
Speaker 1: a an item that you can pick up like a

1192
01:05:00,040 --> 01:05:02,960
Speaker 1: plus one occoms razor that can then be employed in combat.

1193
01:05:03,000 --> 01:05:05,520
Speaker 1: It's like the Master Sword. Yeah, surely there is not

1194
01:05:05,640 --> 01:05:08,600
Speaker 1: combat in this game. I should hope not. I should

1195
01:05:08,640 --> 01:05:14,120
Speaker 1: hope it's just a lot of talking um Catholics. Yeah,

1196
01:05:15,600 --> 01:05:18,720
Speaker 1: I cast the poverty of Christ on you. Well. In

1197
01:05:18,720 --> 01:05:21,080
Speaker 1: the screenshot I was looking at, does look like the

1198
01:05:21,120 --> 01:05:25,080
Speaker 1: main character Baskerville slash. ACoM does have a pair of spectacles,

1199
01:05:25,360 --> 01:05:28,080
Speaker 1: but then there's like one to three there. There are

1200
01:05:28,200 --> 01:05:31,280
Speaker 1: multiple empty spots here, So I guess he gets other stuff.

1201
01:05:31,320 --> 01:05:34,760
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess various books and whatnot, some of

1202
01:05:34,800 --> 01:05:39,000
Speaker 1: lemon juice. Uh, and probably some cheese, some cheese where

1203
01:05:39,080 --> 01:05:41,720
Speaker 1: that gets like some fried cheese at some point, yeah,

1204
01:05:41,760 --> 01:05:44,840
Speaker 1: I think so, but mostly books, mostly books. All right,

1205
01:05:45,480 --> 01:05:47,720
Speaker 1: So there you have it, Acoms raisor hopefully we're able

1206
01:05:47,760 --> 01:05:50,160
Speaker 1: to to lay it out for you, um, you know,

1207
01:05:50,360 --> 01:05:53,320
Speaker 1: an explanation of what what alcomes razor is, where it

1208
01:05:53,400 --> 01:05:57,520
Speaker 1: came from, uh, some of the various opinions on its usefulness.

1209
01:05:58,480 --> 01:06:00,880
Speaker 1: You know. It's so you can take the tool, put

1210
01:06:00,880 --> 01:06:02,640
Speaker 1: it back into the tool chest, and know a little

1211
01:06:02,680 --> 01:06:04,880
Speaker 1: little bit more about it the next time you pull

1212
01:06:04,920 --> 01:06:07,600
Speaker 1: it out and go to use it. In the meantime,

1213
01:06:07,640 --> 01:06:09,320
Speaker 1: if you want to check out other episodes of Stuff

1214
01:06:09,360 --> 01:06:11,120
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind, go to stuff to Blow your

1215
01:06:11,200 --> 01:06:13,240
Speaker 1: Mind dot com. That will shoot you over to the

1216
01:06:13,280 --> 01:06:16,200
Speaker 1: I heart listing for this podcast. But ultimately you can

1217
01:06:16,240 --> 01:06:19,439
Speaker 1: find this podcast wherever you get your podcast. We don't

1218
01:06:19,440 --> 01:06:21,680
Speaker 1: care where that is, wherever it happens. To be. Just

1219
01:06:21,760 --> 01:06:24,280
Speaker 1: make sure that you subscribe, that you rate through your review.

1220
01:06:24,600 --> 01:06:26,880
Speaker 1: These are the things that help us out huge thanks

1221
01:06:26,920 --> 01:06:30,360
Speaker 1: as always to our excellent audio producer, Seth Nicholas Johnson.

1222
01:06:30,680 --> 01:06:32,160
Speaker 1: If you would like to get in touch with us

1223
01:06:32,160 --> 01:06:34,600
Speaker 1: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest

1224
01:06:34,600 --> 01:06:37,160
Speaker 1: topic for the future, just to say hi, you can

1225
01:06:37,240 --> 01:06:40,120
Speaker 1: email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind

1226
01:06:40,280 --> 01:06:49,800
Speaker 1: dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is a production

1227
01:06:49,840 --> 01:06:52,360
Speaker 1: of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from

1228
01:06:52,360 --> 01:06:54,160
Speaker 1: my heart Radio is at the i heart Radio app,

1229
01:06:54,320 --> 01:06:56,960
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows

1230
01:07:00,080 --> 01:07:12,080
Speaker 1: that the point four foot fo