Speaker 1: It's Josh coming back at you hot with our twenty
Speaker 1: eighteen joint on Ockham's razor, one of the more semi
Speaker 1: understood scientific principles, but it's also probably the most widely
Speaker 1: used of them, all too or misused. I guess I
Speaker 1: should say we have a medieval monk who became one
Speaker 1: of the early proto scientists to thank for Ockham's razor,
Speaker 1: which makes him a hero to science. And here's our
Speaker 1: episode on that hero. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know
Speaker 1: from HowStuffWorks dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and
Speaker 1: there's guest producer Tristan over there. So it's stuff you
Speaker 1: should Know.
Speaker 2: I don't know how these are going to release, but
Speaker 2: as you've noticed, Tristan weirdly grew out his mustache in
Speaker 2: the last hour.
Speaker 3: Again, he's quick, he's very past.
Speaker 1: He can make it go in and out, in and out.
Speaker 3: What is that.
Speaker 1: It's like he's growing his mustache and it's sucking it
Speaker 1: back in. Oh, okay, sucking it back in. No, No,
Speaker 1: like a reverse Plato. Right, do you remember that Plato
Speaker 1: set with the.
Speaker 3: Like a little meat grinder.
Speaker 1: No, there was one where like you could grow a
Speaker 1: mustache on it, dude.
Speaker 3: Correctly, I think I remember that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but imagine if you could reverse it too.
Speaker 3: It was called the Plato Nightmare set.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Is that your nightmare? Growing a Plato mustache? Waking
Speaker 1: up like that?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've had that dream about once a week for
Speaker 2: about thirty five years.
Speaker 1: Like all the rest of you is chuck, but just
Speaker 1: your mustache is Wallace and Grommet.
Speaker 3: Yeah, dude.
Speaker 2: Yesterday, I uh, there was a bad smell. Emily and
Speaker 2: I were having a glass of wine at a wine bar.
Speaker 2: There was a bad smell nearby. I think it was
Speaker 2: a dumpster or something, and they were growing fresh herbs
Speaker 2: at the wine bar, and I rubbed a rosemary bush
Speaker 2: and then swiped it all over my mustache. And Emily's
Speaker 2: mind was blown. She was just like, oh my god,
Speaker 2: Like I can't believe, Like that's an actual use for
Speaker 2: facial hair.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess it just to.
Speaker 2: Hold in that smell. It was like, well, you can
Speaker 2: wipe it on your upper lip. It's probably the same thing. Sure,
Speaker 2: maybe the hair retains more.
Speaker 1: Essential oils. I don't know, maybe which essential oils. Man,
Speaker 1: people are clamoring for that episode.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we should do that.
Speaker 1: We will eventually.
Speaker 3: It's been a big part of my life for ten
Speaker 3: and twelve years.
Speaker 1: Now, Essential Oils. We'll talk about it someday, but not today.
Speaker 2: No, no, because Chuck's gonna stumble through a philosophy podcast.
Speaker 1: It's a yeah, I guess it is philosophy. It's the
Speaker 1: philosophy of knowledge. Epistemology is another way to put it.
Speaker 1: But specifically, Chuck, we're talking today about a little ditty
Speaker 1: you may have heard of before called OCAM's razor.
Speaker 3: Called the Gambler?
Speaker 1: Have you? Have you ever you've heard of Okham's razor before?
Speaker 2: Right, Well, so much so that I thought for sure
Speaker 2: we had covered this, But I realized that we just
Speaker 2: talked about it quite a bit in the Uh Scientific
Speaker 2: Method episode.
Speaker 1: I'm not at all surprised because a lot of people
Speaker 1: say that the basis of science, which is how humans
Speaker 1: approach nature in our universe and us and everything scientifically,
Speaker 1: the basis of that is Ocham's razor. And if Okam's
Speaker 1: razor sounds familiar but you can't quite place it, you've
Speaker 1: probably heard it as something like given two possible outcomes
Speaker 1: or explanations or whatever. The simplest version is probably the
Speaker 1: right one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a pretty even that in its simplicity is beautiful.
Speaker 2: The mere statement itself is an example of its simplicity
Speaker 2: and how wonderful can be just to think, like, yeah,
Speaker 2: you know what, let's get through all the gobbledygook. I
Speaker 2: think the easiest way to explain this. Whether it's a
Speaker 2: A H A A what do you call the orb
Speaker 2: in a photos?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's not.
Speaker 2: It's not your great grandfather coming to visit you on
Speaker 2: a different plane. It's really just an error with your photographs.
Speaker 1: It's the flash, yeah, reflecting off a like water vapor
Speaker 1: in the air.
Speaker 3: Or Kennedy probably acted alone.
Speaker 1: Kennedy he shot himself from Afar.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I clearly meant to say Oswald acted alone, because
Speaker 2: that is the simplest explanation, not this very convoluted, deep
Speaker 2: plot that goes that one hundred people were involved in
Speaker 2: to assassinate Kennedy.
Speaker 1: So we'll talk about all that because it's a teaser.
Speaker 1: What you're doing right now is has become pretty standard.
Speaker 1: You're using Okham's razor to disprove other people's points.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's this is.
Speaker 1: A total and complete misuse of Okham's razors not the
Speaker 1: original intention. The original intention had nothing to do with
Speaker 1: saying that's wrong. It is just a heuristic device, a guide,
Speaker 1: a rule of thumb that tells you that, because things
Speaker 1: tend to be more simple in the universe, if you
Speaker 1: if you're doing something, don't make it harder than it
Speaker 1: has to be. Don't add more to it than is
Speaker 1: needed to get the job done. And there's actually a
Speaker 1: couple of ways to put this, and both of them
Speaker 1: get attributed to William of Ockham, who will talk about
Speaker 1: in a second.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Billy Ockham.
Speaker 1: But one is called he sounds like a baseball manager.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: But one is called the principle of plurality.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Harder to say fast than you would think it is,
Speaker 1: And that is translated from the Latin plurality should not
Speaker 1: be positive without necessity. And the other is the principle
Speaker 1: of parsimony, which is it is pointless to do with
Speaker 1: more what is done with less. From what I understand,
Speaker 1: they are one and the same. Oh really, I could
Speaker 1: not find anyone who could explain the difference. And I
Speaker 1: see them interchangeably, not just like on some dude's blog,
Speaker 1: but I'm like, you know, it's the Internet Encyclopedia philosophy
Speaker 1: or the Stanford Encyclopedia philosophy, Like they don't seem to
Speaker 1: be different.
Speaker 2: Well, parsimony, it seems different to me because that specifically
Speaker 2: is like not using resources, not spending money if you
Speaker 2: don't have to. And that seems different than plurality.
Speaker 1: Okay, well then then let's explore it. So plurality adding
Speaker 1: to something, doubling something, maybe just making it more than
Speaker 1: just the singular. He's saying plurality should not be positive
Speaker 1: without necessity. Right, So I guess what he's saying. Then
Speaker 1: if they are different, then if you're if you're guessing
Speaker 1: at something, if you're trying to explain something, don't make
Speaker 1: it harder than it is, don't make it bigger than
Speaker 1: is absolutely necessary to explain it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker 1: Or and this is a really big point that we'll
Speaker 1: see in a minute. William of Occam really was saying,
Speaker 1: don't don't add on to something beyond what you know
Speaker 1: to be true and correct, which a lot of people
Speaker 1: over time, and I think he actually maybe explicitly was
Speaker 1: an impirsist have said William of Ockham was an Impisis.
Speaker 1: He was saying that you need to experience things through
Speaker 1: your senses to know that they are true.
Speaker 2: Yes, empirical evidence if I can look at it or
Speaker 2: smell it, or taste it or feel it.
Speaker 3: What's the fifth one?
Speaker 1: Uh, tickle it, tickle it.
Speaker 2: And then the sixth one, of course we know means
Speaker 2: Bruce Willis is really dead.
Speaker 1: See the ghost of it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if there is no empirical evidence, if you cannot
Speaker 2: experience it with one of your senses, then.
Speaker 3: It's it's poo pooed.
Speaker 1: So so it is so. And those two things, like
Speaker 1: you really especially modern science, especially science these days, you
Speaker 1: put them together. It's given two things. Go with the
Speaker 1: simpler explanation, and you don't don't believe anything that you
Speaker 1: can't sense one way or another through your sensus empirically. Right,
Speaker 1: you put those together, you have the basis for modern science.
Speaker 1: And so the idea that that that things that are
Speaker 1: simpler are better, or the idea that the universe is simpler,
Speaker 1: Like when you start to think about it, it's all
Speaker 1: over the place, right, Like the the idea that the
Speaker 1: universe is based on simpler being better is found everywhere. Right, So,
Speaker 1: like there's things that things have fewer parts, things that
Speaker 1: require less energy, the encapsulation of larger ideas into smaller
Speaker 1: amounts of words or theories or whatever. All these things
Speaker 1: are very much prized by humanity. So it just kind
Speaker 1: of makes sense that Okham's razor is a sensible thing
Speaker 1: and that you could actually use it to uncover the
Speaker 1: mysteries of the universe. Yeah, but again, that's not really
Speaker 1: necessarily the case, to tell you the truth.
Speaker 2: No, I mean, there's there's gonna be a lot of
Speaker 2: uh and and this stuff is kind of fun, just
Speaker 2: a lot of back and forth on Occam's razor throughout
Speaker 2: this whole thing, because there is no its and that's
Speaker 2: kind of part of the whole jam of Ockham's raiser
Speaker 2: is there is no right or wrong here, right.
Speaker 3: You know what's weird is that? Right?
Speaker 1: A lot of people point to it though that it's
Speaker 1: oh this is right. I just proved you wrong and
Speaker 1: that's just not true. Man.
Speaker 3: All right, should we take a break early?
Speaker 1: Okay?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think we should take a break.
Speaker 2: Now because I need to get my head wrapped around
Speaker 2: this and we'll come back getting the way back machine
Speaker 2: and visit Billy Ockham.
Speaker 1: Okay, so now Billy Ockham sounds like a nineteen eighties
Speaker 1: recording star. Oh sure, like Billy Ocean.
Speaker 2: Yeah, get off of my razor and get into my car.
Speaker 1: Was this so we should say the razor too. It's
Speaker 1: a philosophical term, so term of philosophy, the razor used
Speaker 1: to scrape away unnecessary stuff. So it's Okham's razor. So
Speaker 1: let's go back and meet Billy Ockham, shall we.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And you wrote this by the way back in your
Speaker 2: in your article writing Days, and you point out very Astutelee,
Speaker 2: that this is from a time in our history of
Speaker 2: the world where you might not have had a surname.
Speaker 2: You may have been William of Ocham, which is the
Speaker 2: case here, which is in England. And he lived between
Speaker 2: about twelve eighty five and thirteen forty nine, and he
Speaker 2: was a philosophical dude and a Franciscan monk, and he
Speaker 2: very much like you point out, took his valid poverty
Speaker 2: very seriously and lived a very meager, humble life.
Speaker 1: Yeah he did. He also expected the church to take
Speaker 1: the same vow Potterphy, and he actually butted heads with
Speaker 1: the church quite a bit, so much so that he
Speaker 1: ended up getting excommunicated, as we'll see, but he was
Speaker 1: the real deal as far as like a true believer went.
Speaker 1: The weird thing about William of Ocham was that he
Speaker 1: was also a genuinely independent theeker and a rationalist, which
Speaker 1: at the time rationalism and the church did not go
Speaker 1: hand in hand. They were there was really not much rationalism.
Speaker 1: So for an idea, the idea for this this upstart
Speaker 1: Franciscan monk to start questioning the ideas of the church,
Speaker 1: and not only that, but how the leaders of the
Speaker 1: church conducted themselves, and how much money they surrounded themselves with,
Speaker 1: and how much power they had politically. This is it
Speaker 1: was a big deal, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And he is not.
Speaker 2: He did not invent this line of thought as much
Speaker 2: as he's probably attributed to this to people that just
Speaker 2: know him from like a jeopardy board. This is already
Speaker 2: a line of thought well established by this time in
Speaker 2: the medieval times, and he was just he kind of
Speaker 2: boiled it down to those two sentences that you were
Speaker 2: talking about so anyone could understand it. He could put
Speaker 2: it on a bumper sticker and a T shirt and
Speaker 2: sell it, right.
Speaker 1: So it was Aristotle who was the guy who came
Speaker 1: up with this idea first, that simplicity equals perfection, and
Speaker 1: perfection equals simplicity. Said, the more perfect a nature is,
Speaker 1: the fewer means it requires for its operation.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: I love that, So that makes sense.
Speaker 3: That speaks to me.
Speaker 1: But then over time, in between Aristotle and William it
Speaker 1: kind of got expanded. So let me give you an
Speaker 1: example of that same thought from Robert gross Test who
Speaker 1: was an early scientist also a theologian I believe too.
Speaker 1: Here is his version of it that is better and
Speaker 1: more valuable, which requires fewer other circumstances being equal. For
Speaker 1: if one thing we're demonstrated from many in another thing
Speaker 1: from fewer equally known premises, clearly that is better, which
Speaker 1: is from fewer because it makes us know quickly, just
Speaker 1: as a universal demonstration is better than particular because it
Speaker 1: produces knowledge from fewer premises. That similarly, in natural science,
Speaker 1: in moral science, and in metaphysics, the best is that
Speaker 1: which needs no premises, and that better that which needs
Speaker 1: the fewer other circumstances being equal.
Speaker 3: Boy, the ironies there are rich.
Speaker 1: Right. So within less than one hundred years, William of
Speaker 1: Auckham comes along, and he's just like plurality should not
Speaker 1: be positive without necessity, Robert.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And Robert was like, well, yeah, I guess that's
Speaker 3: one way you could say it.
Speaker 1: So I want to say something though, before we keep going, Chuck,
Speaker 1: I actually found a correction of my own article, oh
Speaker 1: that I missed before.
Speaker 3: What's that?
Speaker 1: It turns out that they think now that another theologian
Speaker 1: slash scientist from William of Ockham's era named John Dunn
Speaker 1: scottis was the one who really encapsulated this principle of
Speaker 1: plurality and principle of parsimony, and that it was a
Speaker 1: guy from the nineteenth century, William Rowan Hamilton, a British mathematician,
Speaker 1: that he was the one who misattributed it to William
Speaker 1: of Ockham.
Speaker 2: So is William of Aukham just a a know nothing, No, No,
Speaker 2: His writings definitely included this stuff, and he never took
Speaker 2: credit for this, Okay, But they think think that it
Speaker 2: was actually John's done.
Speaker 1: Scott is who who encapsulated it the way that we
Speaker 1: tend to think of it now.
Speaker 3: So he's sold the bumper stickers.
Speaker 1: But right, But William Levacam thought this way, and he
Speaker 1: was a radical thinker and a rationalist, as we'll.
Speaker 2: See, right, and like you kind of teased out earlier,
Speaker 2: he did butt heads with the church over this. He
Speaker 2: wrote a lot about it, and the church was not
Speaker 2: into it, and Pope John the what is that twenty second?
Speaker 2: They kind of squared off on this, and of course
Speaker 2: the Pope wins all battles, at least back then, and
Speaker 2: he was excommunicated in several of his his monk brothers
Speaker 2: and I take that to mean not real brothers, right right,
Speaker 2: were excommunicated. In thirteen twenty eight, he went to Munich
Speaker 2: seeking refuge. He was protected there by Emperor Louis the fourth,
Speaker 2: and ultimately he went out because he started right about
Speaker 2: Pope John the twenty second, saying he's a heretic, and
Speaker 2: people ultimately believed him.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: He definitely made some pretty convincing points. And he also again,
Speaker 1: like if you're saying I took a vout poverty, the
Speaker 1: church really should too. And the church isn't poverty stricken
Speaker 1: and you are. It gives you a little more credibility
Speaker 1: from the outside as well. Sure, so there's some reasons
Speaker 1: why William of Waucam is this theologian, a devout Franciscan
Speaker 1: Monk is looked upon as one of the fathers of
Speaker 1: Western science, like the foundation of Western science right, or
Speaker 1: science in general. And the reason why is he argued
Speaker 1: against the prevailing ideas at the time, which is called
Speaker 1: medieval synthesis. And this is very much championed by Thomas Aquinas,
Speaker 1: who's a famous theologian. I believe he was a saint
Speaker 1: and one of the reasons he was canonized was because
Speaker 1: of this. Thinking about this, But the whole medieval synthesis
Speaker 1: thing was that God was first and foremost everything. Right,
Speaker 1: you were a member of the church just as much
Speaker 1: as you were a member of your country, a citizen
Speaker 1: of your country. All human knowledge came from God, and
Speaker 1: Thomas Aquinas it wasn't just like the end. Thomas Aquinas
Speaker 1: used philosophy to prove that sentiment that all human knowledge
Speaker 1: came from God, and here is how. And basically it
Speaker 1: took the idea of cause and effect and said that
Speaker 1: you can trace every effect back to a cause, back
Speaker 1: to another effect, back to another cause, but ultimately you
Speaker 1: were going to end up on God, and that all
Speaker 1: of our conceptions of everything arose from God's conception, and
Speaker 1: that God willed that we understand things this way, which
Speaker 1: means that this is the perfect way to understand it,
Speaker 1: which means it's right right. So that is not what
Speaker 1: William Wackam thought. He was again a rationalist who said, no,
Speaker 1: we tend to think things are things because that arises
Speaker 1: in the human mind from cognition, not from God. And
Speaker 1: this dude was not a heretic. He believed that you
Speaker 1: didn't apply rationalism to God, that God required faith, sure,
Speaker 1: and rationalism stood on its own it was a different thing.
Speaker 1: And you couldn't know God through your senses. God was elsewhere.
Speaker 1: Leave God out of this. And the fact that he
Speaker 1: was able to really successfully lay like a philosophical groundwork
Speaker 1: for this, a rational groundwork for it's one thing today
Speaker 1: to be like I'm a secular humanist, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: rational to forget the church that's today. This is at
Speaker 1: a time when this guy is saying this and the
Speaker 1: church has the power to burn you at the stake.
Speaker 1: Like he was a stand up rational thinker, right, which
Speaker 1: kind of makes him a hero of rationality today. But don't.
Speaker 1: And this is another perfect example of how Accam's razor
Speaker 1: gets confused. Accam himself gets confused too, he's a hero
Speaker 1: of science, but it was also one of the more
Speaker 1: devout human beings walking the earth at the time. It
Speaker 1: was a monk for basically his whole life.
Speaker 3: And also had a metal band called Medieval Synthesis.
Speaker 1: Oh that is a good name, isn't it.
Speaker 3: So he was just a conundrum.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he was a conundrum for sure. And again he
Speaker 1: got excommunicated. He had to escape by horse stolen horse. Oh,
Speaker 1: I mean he was not very monk like.
Speaker 3: No, But all right, So.
Speaker 2: We were talking earlier about empirical evidence and how that
Speaker 2: kind of fits in here, and the fact that if
Speaker 2: you can't you know, like, you know the sky is
Speaker 2: blue because you look up and you see it's blue.
Speaker 2: You know a bird makes a whistle because you can
Speaker 2: hear the bird make a whistle.
Speaker 3: So it's very easy to sort of use.
Speaker 2: That and say sure, but if you don't, if you
Speaker 2: can't see it or hear it empirically or any of
Speaker 2: the senses experience it, it's very easy to poo poo.
Speaker 2: And you give a great example here with Lorenz and
Speaker 2: Einstein and kind of which one would win out. So
Speaker 2: both of these guys, both physicists, Einstein obviously more popular
Speaker 2: will see. For a very important reason. They both had
Speaker 2: the conclusion mathematically that with the space time continuum, the
Speaker 2: closer we get to moving at the speed of light,
Speaker 2: the more we slow down, which is hard to wrap
Speaker 2: your head around. So Lorenz comes out and says, explains
Speaker 2: it away because of changes that take place in the ether,
Speaker 2: which he might as well have said, a bit of
Speaker 2: magic happens. Einstein didn't, and so the one we talk
Speaker 2: about today is Einstein and not Lorenz. That explanation of
Speaker 2: Einstein was more rooted in science, and he didn't say
Speaker 2: something wacky like the ether, which is something empirically you
Speaker 2: can't see or smell or taste. So Einstein, you know,
Speaker 2: he won that great battle.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he very famously said, He goes, I don't know
Speaker 1: what's what, but I know it ain't got nothing to
Speaker 1: do with no ether.
Speaker 2: My brain's gonna end up in a jar in some
Speaker 2: guy's garage in New Jersey, right.
Speaker 1: And everybody will love that picture of me with my
Speaker 1: tongue sticking.
Speaker 3: Out, and Walter Mattho will play me in a romantic comedy.
Speaker 1: So Laurence violated that principle of plurality. Right. He added
Speaker 1: something to this that required an additional basically like a
Speaker 1: leap of faith. There was no empirical evidence that there
Speaker 1: was such a thing as the ether.
Speaker 3: And he said, did I say ether? And I didn't
Speaker 3: mean ether? And never went no, no, no to.
Speaker 1: You, late Laurent.
Speaker 3: Well we heard you, buddy.
Speaker 1: And he's still I mean, he's a respected he's a
Speaker 1: respected physicist.
Speaker 3: Still.
Speaker 1: It's not like he was some crackpot or anything like that,
Speaker 1: because if you put his equations in Einstein's equations side
Speaker 1: by side, they came to the same conclusions. It was
Speaker 1: just explaining how Lorenz seems to have misstepped right, right,
Speaker 1: But he was obviously at least as brilliant as Einstein.
Speaker 1: When it comes to that, he's just a little nuts apparently.
Speaker 1: So he violates the principle of plurality. And now we
Speaker 1: understand relativity rather than Lorenz's manic raven Yeah.
Speaker 2: And I don't believe we mentioned there's a word for that.
Speaker 2: If you can't prove it empirically, it doesn't exist. It's
Speaker 2: called positivism. Yes, positivism isn't about having a good.
Speaker 1: Attitude, right, and so this is and this also happened
Speaker 1: during Einstein's working days too. There was a guy named
Speaker 1: Ernest Mack, and Ernest Mock was so Ernst Mack, thank you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's way better than Ernest. Ernst Mock. He was
Speaker 1: so nuts on empiricism. He was a he was an
Speaker 1: early I think he was a physicist, if not a mathematician,
Speaker 1: one of the two. And he he basically said, like,
Speaker 1: molecules don't exist. All this whole bubble over molecules and
Speaker 1: atoms and all this stuff, you're all crazy. We can't
Speaker 1: see him. They don't exist. So there's a there's this
Speaker 1: kind of ironic twist that came from Einstein's working career
Speaker 1: where he actually he beat Lorenz, his rival, to this
Speaker 1: theory through this through Okham's raiser. But he also disproved
Speaker 1: this idea of that Ernest Mock, this thing about only
Speaker 1: believing what you can sense with your your senses, this
Speaker 1: kind of other part of Okham's razor, in a subsequent
Speaker 1: paper that came a few years later that showed that
Speaker 1: molecules do exist. So the idea that that OCAM's razor
Speaker 1: can be used both ways is something that just keeps
Speaker 1: coming up again and again and again. And we'll we'll
Speaker 1: talk about how after a break. How about that? Okay, Chuck, So,
Speaker 1: who who uses Okham's raiser? Obviously everyone who was throwing
Speaker 1: money down on the cockfight between Lorentz and Einstein were
Speaker 1: using Okaham's rais? Were they all went with Einstein's because
Speaker 1: this was the simplest.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah?
Speaker 1: Who else uses it?
Speaker 3: Well?
Speaker 2: I mean you have a great section in this article
Speaker 2: about skeptics, and I know over the years of the show,
Speaker 2: over the past ten years, we've had a lot of
Speaker 2: minor scraps with the skeptic community.
Speaker 1: That's a pretty minor Is that fair to say?
Speaker 2: Yeah, because I mean we have our skeptical side for sure,
Speaker 2: but they're you know, when it comes to skepticism and skeptics,
Speaker 2: it's sort of on a sliding scale. There's a range
Speaker 2: of how you might feel about certain things, and you
Speaker 2: very astutely, i think, point out that if you are
Speaker 2: a true skeptic, then you will not use Akham's raiser
Speaker 2: like I did earlier as a tool to disprove something right,
Speaker 2: that you will only use it as a tool to
Speaker 2: consider different explanations. And that's there's a big difference there.
Speaker 1: There is so like like that whole idea of seeing
Speaker 1: a ghost on film. Right, So there there's there's this
Speaker 1: example where somebody could say, so you just explained something
Speaker 1: about light and refracting and something with the film and
Speaker 1: there was moisture in the air. What's Isn't it just
Speaker 1: simpler to say, no, that was a ghost exactly. And
Speaker 1: in that case, if you were a skeptic, you would
Speaker 1: you would you're you pull a little tuft of your
Speaker 1: hair out, maybe just start scraping at your cheeks until
Speaker 1: you bleed. Uh. Ideally, what you would say is I
Speaker 1: get what you're saying, but you're bringing something into this
Speaker 1: that we don't know exists. Like we do know light exists,
Speaker 1: we do know it refracts off of vapor, we do
Speaker 1: know how this can be captured on film. So yes,
Speaker 1: that sounds very complicated. But the the ghosts don't exist
Speaker 1: as far as we know. We can't send the empirically.
Speaker 1: But I would keep my mind open to the idea
Speaker 1: that ghosts could consumably exist. The fact that I just
Speaker 1: showed that this is reflect the reflection of light off
Speaker 1: of water vapor in this graveyard does not mean that
Speaker 1: your hypothesis about ghosts existing is wrong. It just means
Speaker 1: that's what's in this picture? Right, that's a true skeptic.
Speaker 2: Right, because because things happen and they can later on,
Speaker 2: the more fantastical explanation could.
Speaker 3: Be true and has been true. Uh. And you point
Speaker 3: out very.
Speaker 2: Very plainly here that there's a couple of problems with this,
Speaker 2: and to me, this kind of says it all, is
Speaker 2: that it's subjective. Like the whole notion of determining is
Speaker 2: this is the most simple explanation is completely subjective because
Speaker 2: the ghost explanation, one person might say, no, the ghost
Speaker 2: explanation is clearly the simplest because I can just say
Speaker 2: one word ghost, see there, and then you could fire
Speaker 2: right back. Well know, I can fire back two words
Speaker 2: photographic mishap, right, or maybe just mishapp Yeah, if they
Speaker 2: want to keep it completely equal, And that's the most simple.
Speaker 2: So it's completely subjective as to which one or anything
Speaker 2: that it's the most simple.
Speaker 1: Right exactly. And then again the idea that you can
Speaker 1: use Acam's razor to disprove something just by showing that
Speaker 1: that it's not the simplest explanation, that doesn't that's not correct,
Speaker 1: that's not right, And so scientists will use Occam's razor
Speaker 1: and all sorts of different disciplines like for example, if
Speaker 1: you're making an artificial neural network, right, like a learning machine,
Speaker 1: you might use decision trees, and you will use some
Speaker 1: sort of simple decision tree over a more complicated one
Speaker 1: that can get the same job done. That doesn't mean
Speaker 1: that it's necessarily the right one, but there are demonstrably
Speaker 1: good reasons for picking a simpler one over. It's less
Speaker 1: likely to break, it takes less time, it takes less
Speaker 1: energy to come to the computations. There are things that
Speaker 1: are valuable about it, but it doesn't mean that the
Speaker 1: other one is just wrong. And again, when you're using
Speaker 1: Okham's razors, say, if you're making a neural network, or
Speaker 1: you're pouring through a data set or something like that,
Speaker 1: or you're trying to interpret a big data set, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're making again like you're saying, not just a subjective
Speaker 1: judgment about what's simpler. But that's all there is to it.
Speaker 1: You're making a subjective judgment about what's simpler, not what's right.
Speaker 1: It's not saying what's right. And this is a recurring
Speaker 1: theme that you just have to know because there's so
Speaker 1: many people out there that use Okham's razor to disprove
Speaker 1: other people's ideas, and that's just not at all what
Speaker 1: it was originally intended for. It's just a complete perversion
Speaker 1: of it and it's just wrong, and that's not how
Speaker 1: science works. So if you see somebody out there doing this,
Speaker 1: thump them in the forehead.
Speaker 2: Yeah and boy, then when you get into the outle
Speaker 2: it gets really interesting because this is sort of a
Speaker 2: prime example of the simplest explanation from a believer's point
Speaker 2: of view, is very easy to say, No, the Big
Speaker 2: Bang is incredibly complex and complicated, and it's pretty clear
Speaker 2: that the easiest explanation here and the simplest thing is
Speaker 2: God created life in seven days, right, But that's also
Speaker 2: discounting the process that it took God to create Earth,
Speaker 2: if that's what you believe, and just kind of bundle
Speaker 2: it up in a tidy package, say God created life.
Speaker 2: The Big Bang is super complicated, so and very coincidental
Speaker 2: if you really look at it. So this is the
Speaker 2: simplest explanation, Okham Trazer proofs that God.
Speaker 1: Exists, right, And so that's been used time and time
Speaker 1: again by creationists, right, or people who believe in ghosts
Speaker 1: are people who counter empiricism in a lot of ways. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: But on the other hand, you can you can find
Speaker 1: atheists to use OCAM's razor to show that God does
Speaker 1: not exist, because their point is if the universe tends
Speaker 1: towards simplicity and God is perfect and simplicity is perfection,
Speaker 1: then if God existed, the universe would be a lot
Speaker 1: more simpler. There wouldn't be this big bang thing that
Speaker 1: we have that happen it would You would be right creationists,
Speaker 1: and the fact that you're wrong means that means that
Speaker 1: there is no God, which is just like, my head's
Speaker 1: starting to spin a little bit with this, But it's
Speaker 1: a good example of how you can use OCAM's razor.
Speaker 1: Both sides can use OCAM's razor to disprove the other
Speaker 1: person's point, which against it shows how it's not meant
Speaker 1: to be used that way.
Speaker 2: Well yeah, and then you point out too and talk
Speaker 2: about a headspinner like something like photosynthesis is a pretty
Speaker 2: complex mechanism in nature. But I mean, who's to say
Speaker 2: that that isn't the simplest way to achieve food production
Speaker 2: in a plant. Maybe that is the simplest.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we have no way of knowing that there is
Speaker 1: a simpler model of the universe or photosynthesis or of
Speaker 1: a shark or anything like that, and that even something
Speaker 1: that does seem superfluous, we can't say that in the
Speaker 1: larger scheme of things, that it's actually the simplest way
Speaker 1: to do that, right. So like like a shark seems like, man,
Speaker 1: maybe do you need that extra fin or something like that,
Speaker 1: Or does a cow really need eight stomachs? Or do
Speaker 1: we really need two kidneys?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 1: But what this point is saying is that there's we
Speaker 1: don't have the information to look at everything on such
Speaker 1: a grand scheme of things to say no, there if
Speaker 1: humans only had one kidney, this other larger system would
Speaker 1: break down, and this is actually the simplest way to
Speaker 1: do it, right.
Speaker 3: Or there's a cow with one stomach that we can
Speaker 3: compare it to right.
Speaker 1: Right exactly, So this whole thing, this is the point, Chuck,
Speaker 1: where I reach this very glaring idea that o COM's
Speaker 1: razor or what Aristotle said that simplicity is perfection, that's
Speaker 1: all man made, that's human made. Sure, that's a human
Speaker 1: made concept. To value simplicity is human made. It is
Speaker 1: possible the universe complicated you can come up with all
Speaker 1: sorts of examples of the universe being seemingly pretty complicated.
Speaker 1: Just the universe itself seems pretty complicated, frankly, right, So
Speaker 1: that doesn't necessarily mean that the universe tends towards simplicity.
Speaker 1: It seems like humans value simplicity and the universe uses
Speaker 1: simplicity a lot, But that doesn't mean that simplicity is
Speaker 1: perfection or correctness. That's a human construct.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, and like let's say, in terms of engineering,
Speaker 2: it's probably a decent model to think, hey, the more
Speaker 2: complex the system is that I'm engineering, the more things
Speaker 2: that are to break. So we should probably try and
Speaker 2: make it as simple as possible. That still gets the
Speaker 2: job done. But that's not to say that it can
Speaker 2: be rudimentary, like you might need it might need to
Speaker 2: be a little bit complicated to run at its most.
Speaker 1: Efficient, you know, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: Or art I mean, that's a whole different can of worms.
Speaker 2: You know, that's entirely subjective. Like is you might find
Speaker 2: one drummer that says less is more. You just need
Speaker 2: to provide that basic backbeat and leave room, and then
Speaker 2: you Stuart Copeland comes in the room and laughs and
Speaker 2: punches you in the face because you look like sting.
Speaker 1: Thumps you in the head.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: So that's that's entirely subjective when it comes to art,
Speaker 2: like you know, you've been to a museum and seen
Speaker 2: a twelve inch by twelve inch square painted red, and
Speaker 2: then you've also seen Jackson Pollock or Free de Collo.
Speaker 2: So again, it's just subjective as to simplicity. And maybe
Speaker 2: I don't know, can you apply it to art?
Speaker 3: Am I wrong? There?
Speaker 1: No, not necessarily. I think that's a good point because
Speaker 1: it's still it's it's subjectively valuing something, whether it's complexity
Speaker 1: or whether it's simplicity. It's it doesn't mean it's right.
Speaker 1: That's the point, right that. I think that's your point.
Speaker 1: Is one's not right over the other.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's my point.
Speaker 1: And then there's also plenty of circumstances where Akam's razor
Speaker 1: just doesn't help very much, like very famously Ptolemy's idea
Speaker 1: of the universe. The Earth is the center of the universe.
Speaker 1: The geocentric universe, I think, is what it's called, where
Speaker 1: the Earth is the center of the universe, the Sun,
Speaker 1: the Moon, and all the planets and all the stars
Speaker 1: revolve around Earth is known to be wrong now, but
Speaker 1: for a long time that's what everyone thought until the
Speaker 1: Copernican Revolution, where we realize that not a universe, but
Speaker 1: our solar system is sun centered. The Sun is at
Speaker 1: the center, and the Earth is actually moving around it.
Speaker 1: The thing is is, if you look, if you look
Speaker 1: at the explanations between the two, they are pretty close,
Speaker 1: and one's not necessarily less simple than the other. And
Speaker 1: if you put them side by side Ockham's razors, that
Speaker 1: doesn't really help. You have to dig a little deeper
Speaker 1: and figure it out that actually know this one's right
Speaker 1: based on these observations. We think this one's right, but
Speaker 1: it has nothing necessarily to do with complexity. And then
Speaker 1: on the other side of the equation, just because something's
Speaker 1: complex doesn't mean that it's wrong. So the next time
Speaker 1: somebody starts flailing some Occam's razor stuff at you, you
Speaker 1: tell them I'm gonna thump you. Do you want to
Speaker 1: be thumped?
Speaker 3: You don'tump and everybody me, yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, because they're asking for it.
Speaker 3: Is it just a very mild act of violence? Yeah,
Speaker 3: you don't want to be two. You don't want to
Speaker 3: punch someone in the face.
Speaker 1: No, no, and plus I mean think you shouldn't you
Speaker 1: shouldn't thump anybody and way I was totally kidding it. Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: thanks for setting me up for that one. Sure. Oh
Speaker 1: one other thing, A lot of people say that OCAM's
Speaker 1: razor squashes free thought, So I think that does kind
Speaker 1: of tie in with your art thing, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean, like, feel free to go be complex, there's
Speaker 1: nothing wrong with it, doesn't like not everything has to
Speaker 1: be funneled through this Okham's razor thing and made simpler
Speaker 1: just to make it better. Yeah, well, Chuck, we made
Speaker 1: it through this one sort of It's better than Jackhammers.
Speaker 3: I'll tell you that I think you did well.
Speaker 1: I think you did as well man. That means that
Speaker 1: it was a good episode. If you want to learn
Speaker 1: more about Akham's razor, you could read my SOSO article
Speaker 1: on the site how Stuffworks dot com. Just type it
Speaker 1: in the search bar. And since I said so, so
Speaker 1: it's time for a listener mail.
Speaker 2: All right, I'm gonna call this North Korea Part two.
Speaker 2: We heard from a woman in Australia. We were corrected.
Speaker 2: It just starts with a nest.
Speaker 3: There is no.
Speaker 2: Awe, right, a woman in Australia named Claire Sutherland who
Speaker 2: actually had an interaction away with North Korea when she
Speaker 2: was editor at Australian newspaper called Little m Big X.
Speaker 3: Okay, it's MX.
Speaker 1: But it's just X.
Speaker 3: Oh is it No? I don't know know.
Speaker 1: They don't say awe before Australia.
Speaker 3: So oh, I got you.
Speaker 1: Probably not the Little Lamp.
Speaker 2: Well, she's based in Elbourne and they have editions in Melbourne,
Speaker 2: Sydney and Brisbane. And she says, during the London Olympics
Speaker 2: in our daily metal tally graphic, we listed North and
Speaker 2: South Korea as a naughty Korea and nice Korea. Just
Speaker 2: kind of a cheeky thing, I guess, she said. We've
Speaker 2: been doing this for about a week when we received
Speaker 2: a call from a Wall Street Journal reporter based in
Speaker 2: Seoul seeking comment about the fact that North Korea just
Speaker 2: issued an official condemnation of our paper and its editor.
Speaker 3: At first, our assumption was.
Speaker 2: We were being punked, but he directed us to the
Speaker 2: official PR website of North Korea. Sure enough, there was
Speaker 2: a flowery diatribe and Communist English which misnamed their paper
Speaker 2: Metro by the Way, and called us sordid bullying and
Speaker 2: petty thieves, declaring we would be cursed long in Olympic history.
Speaker 2: I think my favorite extract is this, She says, editors
Speaker 2: of the paper were so incompetent as to tarnish the
Speaker 2: reputation of the paper by themselves by producing the article
Speaker 2: like that. There is a saying a straw may show
Speaker 2: which way the wind blows, a single article may exhibit
Speaker 2: the level of the paper. Wow came down on her,
Speaker 2: She says. The Wall Street Journal described the official statement
Speaker 2: as most unusual, and we ended up making some minor
Speaker 2: international headlines because of it. We ran the statement in
Speaker 2: full with a story about our sudden entry into world
Speaker 2: affairs on the front page. The headline was North Korea
Speaker 2: fires missive. At the time we thought it was equal
Speaker 2: parts ridiculous and funny. It happened today at probably try
Speaker 2: and arrange new identities for me and my staff. Anyway,
Speaker 2: thanks from me and my dog for the show. Looking
Speaker 2: forward to seeing you in Melbourne. That is from Claire Sutherland.
Speaker 1: Thanks Claire, that was a great story. Well you really
Speaker 1: want this one over, don't you.
Speaker 3: Sure?
Speaker 1: If you want to get in touch with me and
Speaker 1: Chuck with a great story, you can tweet to us,
Speaker 1: I'm at Josh M. Clark, Chuck's at movie Crush, We're
Speaker 1: both at s YSK podcast. Chuck's on Facebook dot com
Speaker 1: slash Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and we're at Facebook dot
Speaker 1: com slash stuff You should know. You can send us
Speaker 1: an email to Stuff Podcast at HowStuffWorks dot com and
Speaker 1: is always joining us at our home on the web,
Speaker 1: Stuff youshould know dot com For more on this and
Speaker 1: thousands of other topics. What is it HowStuffWorks dot com