WEBVTT - Occam's Razor 0:00:03.000 --> 0:00:04.960 Welcome Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of I 0:00:05.000 --> 0:00:13.800 Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, you, welcome to Stuff 0:00:13.840 --> 0:00:16.040 to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and 0:00:16.120 --> 0:00:19.920 I'm Joe McCormick. Today we're going to discuss a problem 0:00:20.000 --> 0:00:22.680 solving principle that many of you have probably heard of 0:00:23.160 --> 0:00:25.600 and that we've we've definitely referenced on the show before, 0:00:25.640 --> 0:00:28.640 and that is Acom's razor. That's right, it's it's one 0:00:28.640 --> 0:00:30.560 of the classics, one of the hits of like the 0:00:30.600 --> 0:00:33.720 skeptical tool kit. And uh, I think it's a really 0:00:33.760 --> 0:00:35.920 good one to get into because it's something that is 0:00:36.280 --> 0:00:40.239 widely known, but in different ways and often, uh, to 0:00:40.320 --> 0:00:44.240 whatever extent it actually does have value, it often gets 0:00:44.240 --> 0:00:46.720 deployed in ways that do not actually make use of 0:00:46.760 --> 0:00:50.320 its value, right, Like like an actual razor blade, it 0:00:50.360 --> 0:00:54.440 may be misused from time to time. Now, one specific 0:00:54.480 --> 0:00:56.200 place that I know we've talked about it before is 0:00:56.280 --> 0:01:00.280 that is in the context of Carl Sagan's recommend as 0:01:00.320 --> 0:01:04.320 for the tools of skeptical thinking. Uh, he lays these 0:01:04.360 --> 0:01:07.440 out and one of them is Okam's razor. He writes, 0:01:07.520 --> 0:01:11.120 Okam's razor, this convenient rule of thumb urges us, when 0:01:11.160 --> 0:01:14.959 faced with two hypotheses that explained the data equally well, 0:01:15.360 --> 0:01:18.200 to choose the simpler. Okay, now, why did we end 0:01:18.280 --> 0:01:20.440 up talking about this today. We were in the studio 0:01:20.480 --> 0:01:23.880 the other day, uh, discussing upcoming episodes, and you said 0:01:23.880 --> 0:01:26.280 that Seth had mentioned this, our our producer, Seth. Yeah. 0:01:26.319 --> 0:01:29.720 I was in here and Seth Nicholas Johnson was working 0:01:29.720 --> 0:01:32.240 on a crossword puzzle. Was it the New York Times? 0:01:32.720 --> 0:01:34.960 He tells us it was the New York Times, Uh, 0:01:34.959 --> 0:01:37.080 And he he asked me how to spell okam is 0:01:37.120 --> 0:01:40.560 an Ockham's razor And I took a guess at it, 0:01:40.800 --> 0:01:43.160 and I can't I can't remember I was correct. I 0:01:43.200 --> 0:01:45.160 was probably wrong, but also probably hit one of the 0:01:45.280 --> 0:01:49.840 multiple acceptable spellings for OCAM's razors um. But anyway, we 0:01:49.880 --> 0:01:51.480 started talking about it and I was like, oh, yeah, 0:01:51.480 --> 0:01:53.760 we could do that as an episode, and so here 0:01:53.760 --> 0:01:55.560 we are. I'm very glad we picked this because I 0:01:55.560 --> 0:01:58.800 think one of my personal favorite genres of of critical 0:01:58.840 --> 0:02:02.800 thinking is is being skeptical about the tools of skepticism. 0:02:02.840 --> 0:02:06.640 You know, is sometimes people who identify as skeptics can 0:02:06.880 --> 0:02:08.880 can I get a little cocky? You know? They get 0:02:08.880 --> 0:02:11.680 a little too sure of themselves about what the reasoning 0:02:11.720 --> 0:02:14.600 tools they use, and it's worth putting those tools to 0:02:14.639 --> 0:02:18.000 the test, giving them a closer look. Yeah. Absolutely, Now 0:02:18.120 --> 0:02:20.320 I have to say that I definitely remember the first 0:02:20.360 --> 0:02:22.920 time I encountered the concept of Ockham's Rays, or at 0:02:22.960 --> 0:02:25.120 least the first first time I encountered it, and it 0:02:25.240 --> 0:02:28.280 on some level stuck with me. And that was when 0:02:28.320 --> 0:02:32.800 I view the film adaptation of Carl Sagan's novel Contact. 0:02:34.480 --> 0:02:38.079 The movie I can't watch without crying. Oh yeah, well, 0:02:38.120 --> 0:02:42.480 why does it make you cry? Oh god, there's part No, No, 0:02:42.600 --> 0:02:45.600 it's just it's pointed, like especially the first part where 0:02:46.120 --> 0:02:48.040 you know it zooms out from the earth and you're 0:02:48.040 --> 0:02:50.639 hearing the radio signals go back in time, and then 0:02:50.800 --> 0:02:53.519 and then it shows the young Ellie air Away experimenting 0:02:53.520 --> 0:02:56.120 with the Ham radio and her dad's helping her, and 0:02:56.200 --> 0:02:59.320 I get so emotional. I don't know, it's yeah, yeah, 0:02:59.360 --> 0:03:01.440 it's it's been a very long I haven't seen it 0:03:01.440 --> 0:03:04.400 since it initially came out, And in fact, the main 0:03:04.440 --> 0:03:07.320 thing I remember from it is this scene in which 0:03:07.400 --> 0:03:12.400 Jodie Foster's character Eleanor air Away has having this conversation 0:03:12.440 --> 0:03:15.880 with Matthew McConaughey's character. Who how old was Matthew McConaughey 0:03:15.880 --> 0:03:17.640 at this point, I don't even know how old he 0:03:17.720 --> 0:03:21.320 is now he's just like this ageless demon. But anyway, 0:03:21.320 --> 0:03:24.239 he has his character. He's playing his character named Palmer Joss. 0:03:25.120 --> 0:03:28.160 And in the scene in question, Foster's character brings up 0:03:28.200 --> 0:03:31.320 Acam's raiser in a discussion on the nature of God. 0:03:31.800 --> 0:03:35.560 She she says, well, which is ultimately the simpler hypothesis 0:03:35.880 --> 0:03:39.400 than an all powerful God exists, or the human beings 0:03:39.440 --> 0:03:42.280 made God up in order to feel better about things, 0:03:42.840 --> 0:03:45.280 and then this ultimately comes back around. Is kind of 0:03:45.280 --> 0:03:47.720 flipped on her later on in the film regarding her 0:03:47.800 --> 0:03:52.040 character's encounter with an extraterrestrial intelligence, Right, is it more 0:03:52.080 --> 0:03:54.560 likely that she really had the experience she thinks she 0:03:54.640 --> 0:03:57.520 had with with all these aliens or that she like 0:03:57.600 --> 0:04:01.440 hallucinated something that would give her emotional clothe posure and so, yeah, 0:04:01.440 --> 0:04:03.080 I think I was in high school at the time, 0:04:03.080 --> 0:04:05.560 so it was It was an interesting concept, especially in 0:04:05.600 --> 0:04:10.120 the context of atheism versus you know, faith in a 0:04:10.160 --> 0:04:13.400 creator deity. Uh, to to suddenly have this tool from 0:04:13.400 --> 0:04:15.760 the chest of skeptical thinking just thrown up on the 0:04:15.800 --> 0:04:19.719 table and you and seemingly used by both sides. Well, yeah, 0:04:19.760 --> 0:04:21.760 I think this is funny. This is a great example 0:04:22.080 --> 0:04:24.440 because it highlights some of the most common features of 0:04:24.480 --> 0:04:28.479 Acam's razor as it is actually used, Like it's often 0:04:28.560 --> 0:04:31.800 invoked in a kind of fuzzy way, like without an 0:04:31.800 --> 0:04:36.240 objective measure. Uh, just kind of invoked to back up 0:04:36.279 --> 0:04:40.159 your intuitions about the probability of something. Right. But another 0:04:40.200 --> 0:04:43.080 thing is that this example shows how it's not always 0:04:43.120 --> 0:04:46.159 easy to find a way to compare the simplicity of 0:04:46.200 --> 0:04:50.120 two different propositions, like is the existence of God a 0:04:50.200 --> 0:04:53.520 simple hypothesis or a complicated one? That I think that 0:04:53.600 --> 0:04:56.800 really depends on kind of how you feel about it, Like, 0:04:57.040 --> 0:04:59.360 like what kind of objective measure can you come up 0:04:59.400 --> 0:05:01.680 with to a vow evaluate that question? Right, It's going 0:05:01.720 --> 0:05:04.760 to depend so much on your like your background, your culture, 0:05:04.760 --> 0:05:07.520 what you grew up with than just like how you 0:05:08.040 --> 0:05:10.560 how you've come to view the possibility of of of 0:05:10.600 --> 0:05:13.080 God's existence. Is it just kind of the bedrock of 0:05:13.160 --> 0:05:16.680 your your worldview or is it this thing from the 0:05:16.720 --> 0:05:19.760 outside that you are contemplating? And also how do you 0:05:19.880 --> 0:05:22.400 view it, Like the coherence of the idea. Do you 0:05:22.480 --> 0:05:25.039 view it as something that's like, uh, that's full of 0:05:25.080 --> 0:05:29.040 all these little kind of ad hoc accommodations, or something 0:05:29.080 --> 0:05:33.280 that is a holistic, coherent sort of like fact about nature. 0:05:33.920 --> 0:05:37.160 You know, it's I think this is a perfect example 0:05:37.240 --> 0:05:40.400 that shows like when people use the idea of Acam's 0:05:40.440 --> 0:05:43.440 razor in a way that is not helpful and doesn't 0:05:43.440 --> 0:05:45.920 really doesn't really get you any closer to figuring out 0:05:45.920 --> 0:05:48.200 what's true. Now, if you're one, If if you're still 0:05:48.400 --> 0:05:51.960 questioning like what the concept really means, don't worry. We 0:05:52.000 --> 0:05:54.800 will get to some I think some some very understandable 0:05:54.800 --> 0:05:59.320 examples of how it can be used properly and used improperly. 0:06:00.040 --> 0:06:02.800 But let's go ahead and to start about the concept 0:06:02.839 --> 0:06:07.479 itself the word acum uh and you know where this 0:06:07.600 --> 0:06:10.520 comes from. We'll get to the origins of Akam's razor. So, 0:06:10.720 --> 0:06:14.400 Acam's razor is also known as the principle of parsimony, 0:06:14.400 --> 0:06:19.479 and parsimony means a tendency toward cheapness or frugality. So 0:06:19.560 --> 0:06:21.640 I like that. It's like the principle of parsimony is 0:06:21.680 --> 0:06:25.120 like you want to be cheap with your with your logic, right, Yeah, 0:06:25.279 --> 0:06:28.080 I don't need more than two steps of logic between 0:06:28.080 --> 0:06:30.479 me and the solution. Uh, you know, don't give me 0:06:30.520 --> 0:06:33.200 one with four or five. Uh. And it was named 0:06:33.200 --> 0:06:36.760 after the medieval English philosopher William of Ockham, of course, 0:06:36.920 --> 0:06:39.960 William of Ockum. Uh so he he lived in the 0:06:40.000 --> 0:06:43.320 thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, from twelve eighty five to either 0:06:43.360 --> 0:06:46.360 thirteen forty seven or thirteen forty nine. I've seen different 0:06:46.520 --> 0:06:50.200 death dates given for him. I've seen different birthdates as well, 0:06:50.640 --> 0:06:53.080 twelve eighty seven or twelve eighty eight. What I was 0:06:53.120 --> 0:06:56.240 looking at. That's interesting. So he was a prolific scholar, 0:06:56.520 --> 0:06:59.719 Franciscan friar. We'll get more into his ideas in a minute. 0:07:00.120 --> 0:07:01.880 You know, one thing I've always wondered is where the 0:07:01.880 --> 0:07:04.120 heck is ACoM. I've never heard of that. Well, yeah, 0:07:04.160 --> 0:07:05.800 because the words sound it has kind of like a 0:07:05.839 --> 0:07:09.279 remoteness to it. It sounds alien in some ways. Akom 0:07:09.520 --> 0:07:12.000 is very much a real place. It is a rural 0:07:12.080 --> 0:07:14.920 village in Surrey, England. You can look it up online. 0:07:14.920 --> 0:07:18.480 You can find out the website for the church in Ockham, 0:07:18.600 --> 0:07:22.320 for example. And this area has been occupied since ancient times. 0:07:22.400 --> 0:07:26.200 It's about a day's ride southwest of London, and it 0:07:26.280 --> 0:07:29.480 was the birthplace of the individual who had come to 0:07:29.520 --> 0:07:32.360 be known as William of Ockham. Now beyond that, beyond 0:07:32.400 --> 0:07:35.280 the fact that he was born here, we don't know 0:07:35.360 --> 0:07:38.920 a lot about William's life. Uh, we don't know what 0:07:39.040 --> 0:07:42.320 his social or family background was, or if his native 0:07:42.440 --> 0:07:46.520 language was French or Middle English. As Paul Vincent Spade 0:07:46.560 --> 0:07:50.600 explains in The Cambridge Companion to Ockum, he was likely 0:07:50.680 --> 0:07:53.400 given over to the Franciscan Order as a young boy 0:07:53.480 --> 0:07:56.840 before the age of fourteen, and here Latin would have 0:07:56.920 --> 0:07:59.880 quickly become his language of of of not only writing, 0:08:00.000 --> 0:08:03.920 it also just conversation. Gray Friar's convent in London was 0:08:04.000 --> 0:08:08.800 likely his home convent, but later he traveled. He visited Avignon, 0:08:09.240 --> 0:08:11.840 he visited Italy, and he lived the last two decades 0:08:11.880 --> 0:08:17.560 of his life in Germany. Now, philosophically, William was a nominalist, 0:08:18.040 --> 0:08:20.760 and Spade writes that the two main themes of this 0:08:20.880 --> 0:08:26.080 for William were the rejection of universals and ontological reduction. 0:08:26.760 --> 0:08:29.960 And these two themes are are not necessarily interconnected. Like 0:08:30.040 --> 0:08:32.000 you can you could you could believe in one but 0:08:32.040 --> 0:08:36.880 not the other, you know, and vice versa. Um. But basically, 0:08:37.200 --> 0:08:39.880 let's let's get into what these means. So the first, 0:08:40.000 --> 0:08:43.920 the rejection of universals is perhaps best considered and and 0:08:43.920 --> 0:08:46.760 this is very brief and broad certainly you can find 0:08:47.920 --> 0:08:51.240 so much written and said on this topic. But basically, 0:08:51.320 --> 0:08:54.040 think of it as a rejection of the Platonic idea 0:08:54.080 --> 0:08:56.959 of the realm of forms. So that idea that all 0:08:57.040 --> 0:08:59.600 chairs that we might make, the wom I design and 0:08:59.760 --> 0:09:01.800 call are of an a symbol, are an attempt to 0:09:01.800 --> 0:09:04.960 create the perfect chair, which doesn't reside in our world, 0:09:04.960 --> 0:09:08.360 but only resides within this realm of forms. So all 0:09:08.480 --> 0:09:10.760 chairs that we create are like an aspiration for the 0:09:10.840 --> 0:09:13.400 ideal chair. Another way I've thought about it, at least 0:09:13.440 --> 0:09:15.480 as I understood it, was that nominalism is kind of 0:09:15.520 --> 0:09:18.720 the idea that there is no such thing as a chair. 0:09:18.880 --> 0:09:22.040 There's only this chair and that chair, and this chair 0:09:22.080 --> 0:09:25.520 over here. There is no chair right like this is. 0:09:25.559 --> 0:09:27.240 This is the kind of the situation. One gets it 0:09:27.320 --> 0:09:30.920 too when you you get into like the genre classifications 0:09:30.960 --> 0:09:34.800 of say albums, artists, or movies that you care a 0:09:34.840 --> 0:09:37.960 great deal about, and someone tries to limit it to 0:09:38.240 --> 0:09:40.720 a classification and say, oh, well that's classic rock or 0:09:40.760 --> 0:09:42.920 that's alternative rock. And you're like no, no, no, no, no, 0:09:43.480 --> 0:09:46.240 you don't. Don't try and fit that. There is there is. 0:09:46.440 --> 0:09:49.160 These categories do not apply. There is. There is only 0:09:49.480 --> 0:09:51.400 you know, whatever your band of choice happens to be. That, 0:09:51.480 --> 0:09:53.880 there is only tool, there is only primus or whatever. 0:09:54.160 --> 0:09:57.160 Right there, Yeah, there there is only things, not categories. 0:09:57.600 --> 0:10:01.439 Now let's move on to the second theme here, ontological reduction. 0:10:02.120 --> 0:10:05.840 This is, as Britannica defines it, quote, the metaphysical doctrine 0:10:06.200 --> 0:10:09.600 that entities of a certain kind are, in reality collections 0:10:09.679 --> 0:10:13.720 or combinations of entities of simpler or more basic kind. 0:10:14.200 --> 0:10:18.600 I think your classic example here is molecules atoms. Yeah. 0:10:19.000 --> 0:10:24.199 So another example, here's while our Aristotle defined ten categories 0:10:24.200 --> 0:10:28.200 of objects that might be apprehended by a human mind, 0:10:28.320 --> 0:10:31.679 and these would have been uh translations, vary on on 0:10:31.679 --> 0:10:35.000 on how you wanted define these. But substance, quantity, quality, 0:10:35.520 --> 0:10:40.240 relative place, time, attitude, condition, action, and affection. William cut 0:10:40.280 --> 0:10:43.920 these down to two. Substance and quality. He's really getting 0:10:43.920 --> 0:10:46.160 in there. That's the razor. That's what a razor does. 0:10:46.600 --> 0:10:49.480 It just it slices away, it cuts off the fat 0:10:49.520 --> 0:10:52.640 and gets down to the meat. Spade writes, quote. Although 0:10:52.720 --> 0:10:56.199 these two strands of Acam's thinking are independent, they are 0:10:56.240 --> 0:11:00.360 nevertheless often viewed as joint effects of a more fundamental cern, 0:11:00.720 --> 0:11:04.640 the principle of parsimony, known as Akam's razor. Okay, so 0:11:04.679 --> 0:11:07.760 we're getting to the razor here. So William devoted a 0:11:07.800 --> 0:11:11.920 lot of energy to arguing against what Spade calls the 0:11:11.960 --> 0:11:17.440 bloated ontological inventories of his contemporaries, and he became well 0:11:17.520 --> 0:11:21.640 known to his peers for this as such. Either towards 0:11:21.679 --> 0:11:24.360 the end of his life or shortly after his death, 0:11:24.720 --> 0:11:28.880 a kind of greatest hits album came out on his 0:11:28.960 --> 0:11:32.960 thoughts and ideas, titled on the Principles of Theology. Now 0:11:32.960 --> 0:11:36.280 it wasn't actually by William of Ockham, but it featured 0:11:36.320 --> 0:11:39.800 his doctrine as well as verbatim quotes. There was no 0:11:39.840 --> 0:11:44.040 ascribed author either, so later generations would often just attribute 0:11:44.040 --> 0:11:46.720 it to him um as well as the notion of 0:11:46.720 --> 0:11:51.760 Acam's razor. Uh. However, this specific phrase was apparently never 0:11:52.080 --> 0:11:55.240 actually used by him. He never said, Ackam in the house, 0:11:55.360 --> 0:11:57.360 I'm going to get the razor out and start carving 0:11:57.400 --> 0:12:00.640 on some uh, some some some some ideas here. No, 0:12:00.840 --> 0:12:04.200 this is something that is attributed by others to his work. Yeah, 0:12:04.200 --> 0:12:07.360 Okam's razor is a is a name for this principle 0:12:07.600 --> 0:12:10.600 that is supposed to be kind of a summation of 0:12:10.640 --> 0:12:14.560 several different thoughts he articulated in different ways. Yes, yeah, 0:12:14.559 --> 0:12:18.160 he summed it up in different different manners in Spain. 0:12:18.240 --> 0:12:20.360 Includes includes a few examples of this in his work. 0:12:20.480 --> 0:12:23.319 For instance, here's here's some quotes from Akam. Beings are 0:12:23.360 --> 0:12:28.120 not to be multiplied beyond necessity or plurality is not 0:12:28.200 --> 0:12:32.440 to be posited without necessity, or what can happen through 0:12:32.559 --> 0:12:36.240 fewer principles happens in vain through more and there are 0:12:36.240 --> 0:12:39.280 other There are other examples of this as well. We're 0:12:39.400 --> 0:12:42.600 basically saying the same thing, but maybe like it just 0:12:42.640 --> 0:12:44.920 comes off a little flower, at least in translations. Yeah, 0:12:44.960 --> 0:12:47.640 I think the the simple version you could get to 0:12:48.160 --> 0:12:52.040 the summarizing some of his abuse here, like, uh, don't 0:12:52.080 --> 0:12:56.400 make assumptions you don't have to, don't pile on explanations 0:12:56.520 --> 0:12:59.840 that are not necessary. Yeah, and also just don't take 0:13:00.000 --> 0:13:02.000 more steps that are necessary to get from point A 0:13:02.080 --> 0:13:05.240 to point B in your reasoning. And in your hypothesis. 0:13:05.960 --> 0:13:08.880 And the way this usually gets translated into modern thinking, 0:13:08.880 --> 0:13:11.360 as we've talked about before, is that when you've got 0:13:11.400 --> 0:13:15.600 competing explanations, it's better to tend towards the simpler one, 0:13:15.679 --> 0:13:18.400 the one that makes fewer assumptions, rather than the more 0:13:18.440 --> 0:13:22.280 complicated one that makes more assumptions. Now here's another fun 0:13:22.400 --> 0:13:26.079 fact about William of Ackom. William Ackom is key to 0:13:26.320 --> 0:13:29.880 Elmberto Echo's excellent novel The Name of the Rose Yep. 0:13:30.600 --> 0:13:33.559 This was a novel that was published in nineteen eighty. 0:13:33.760 --> 0:13:36.439 Many of you may be familiar with the certainly the 0:13:36.200 --> 0:13:41.040 the film adaptation that started Sean Connery, f Murray, Abraham Um, 0:13:41.280 --> 0:13:43.880 Christian Slater in a host of wonderful character actors. And 0:13:43.920 --> 0:13:46.920 then there was there's a more recent mini series adaptation 0:13:46.920 --> 0:13:49.719 with John Taturo that I have not seen, but I 0:13:49.720 --> 0:13:52.280 should probably see at some point or another. But anyway, 0:13:52.360 --> 0:13:56.520 the main character in Echoes novel is William of Baskerville, 0:13:56.679 --> 0:13:59.880 who is in many ways similar. He's a Franciscan friar. 0:14:00.320 --> 0:14:04.240 He's got a kind of empirical streak. Yeah, he's basically 0:14:04.280 --> 0:14:08.080 a mash up of William of Ockham and Sherlock Holmes. 0:14:08.160 --> 0:14:12.679 Thus the Baskerville alluding to uh Hound of the Baskerville's 0:14:13.760 --> 0:14:16.480 and the title itself. The Name of the Rose has 0:14:16.559 --> 0:14:20.800 has been interpreted as being a reference to Acom's uh nominalism. 0:14:20.840 --> 0:14:23.480 There is no one rose. There is only the Name 0:14:23.600 --> 0:14:25.680 of the Rose. But there are also other, I think 0:14:25.800 --> 0:14:28.160 interpretations on it, and it's meant to be kind of cryptic. 0:14:28.760 --> 0:14:31.080 Now according to I was reading more about this, and 0:14:31.200 --> 0:14:32.960 it's been been a little while since I've read In 0:14:32.960 --> 0:14:34.440 the Name of the Rose. You've read it more recently 0:14:34.440 --> 0:14:36.760 than yes, because we were misremembering. We were thinking, now, 0:14:36.840 --> 0:14:38.520 was it was the Was it the case in the 0:14:38.520 --> 0:14:41.480 book that William of Ockham was supposed to be this 0:14:41.600 --> 0:14:44.600 fictional main character's mentor. I somehow had that in my 0:14:44.720 --> 0:14:48.840 mind as well. No, Instead it was another medieval scholastic thinker. 0:14:48.840 --> 0:14:52.600 It was Roger Bacon. Yes, so so yes, Roger Bacon 0:14:52.800 --> 0:14:56.560 was William of Baskerville's mentor, as opposed to William of Acham, 0:14:56.600 --> 0:14:59.800 who I do not believe as Ackam is actually mentioned 0:15:00.120 --> 0:15:03.440 in the novel. So I was reading a little bit 0:15:03.440 --> 0:15:05.880 more about this. There was a two thousand eighteen article 0:15:05.960 --> 0:15:09.800 that came out in Philosophy now by Carol Nicholson, titled 0:15:09.800 --> 0:15:13.360 Acom's Rose, and she pointed out that Echo had apparently 0:15:13.400 --> 0:15:16.880 explored the possibility of simply using ACoM as his main 0:15:17.000 --> 0:15:21.360 character in in this novel, but he ultimately quote did 0:15:21.400 --> 0:15:25.320 not find him a very attractive person. And therefore, I mean, 0:15:25.320 --> 0:15:27.240 did that makes sense right? If you're it's like, you 0:15:27.280 --> 0:15:29.560 can either lean on a historical figure, or he can 0:15:29.600 --> 0:15:32.040 do something a little more fun and do a mash 0:15:32.160 --> 0:15:36.320 up of Acum and the great Detective And ultimately, I 0:15:36.320 --> 0:15:38.280 mean that's one of the fun things about the novel 0:15:38.520 --> 0:15:40.840 is that is that you do have these elements where 0:15:40.880 --> 0:15:44.280 it's a it's Sherlock Holmes going up against bores, you know, 0:15:44.360 --> 0:15:47.120 that kind of sort of thing. She writes, Uh, this 0:15:47.200 --> 0:15:49.880 is interesting as well, just to draw the parallel between 0:15:49.880 --> 0:15:53.400 William of Baskerville and William of of of ACoM, She writes, Quote. 0:15:53.400 --> 0:15:55.760 In thirty seven, the year in which the name of 0:15:55.760 --> 0:15:59.520 the Rose is set, ACoM faced fifty six charges of 0:15:59.560 --> 0:16:03.400 harris and was excommunicated after escaping the protection of Emperor 0:16:03.440 --> 0:16:06.680 Louis of Bavaria. This put an end to his academic career, 0:16:06.720 --> 0:16:08.200 and he spent the rest of his life as a 0:16:08.240 --> 0:16:11.800 political activists, advocating freedom of speech, the separation of church 0:16:11.800 --> 0:16:15.320 and state, and arguing against the infallibility of the pope. 0:16:15.640 --> 0:16:18.640 She also points out that Acham, like the fictional William 0:16:18.640 --> 0:16:23.000 of Baskerville, likely died of the plague. Alright, on that note, 0:16:23.000 --> 0:16:24.520 we're going to take a quick break, but when we 0:16:24.560 --> 0:16:28.160 come back, we will continue our discussion of Okam's razor. 0:16:29.760 --> 0:16:33.640 Thank alright, we're back, all right. So we've been talking 0:16:33.720 --> 0:16:37.680 about this principle known as Akam's razor that we've described 0:16:37.720 --> 0:16:41.680 already as the idea that simpler hypotheses are better than 0:16:41.720 --> 0:16:44.040 more complex hypotheses. There are a number of ways you 0:16:44.080 --> 0:16:46.720 can formulate it, but it's a principle that's been referred 0:16:46.760 --> 0:16:49.920 back to actually since probably before William of Acam. It 0:16:49.920 --> 0:16:52.560 it is, i think, a principle that somewhat predates him 0:16:52.560 --> 0:16:55.360 in intellectual history, right right. He did not he did 0:16:55.360 --> 0:16:59.680 not create something that was not already um utilized by 0:16:59.680 --> 0:17:02.400 other thing ancres of the day and thinkers before him. 0:17:02.720 --> 0:17:05.600 One great example of somebody not before William Avacham but 0:17:05.680 --> 0:17:09.280 later articulating similar ideas is Isaac Newton, in his great 0:17:09.320 --> 0:17:14.320 work The Principia Mathematica from seven, Newton writes, quote, we 0:17:14.400 --> 0:17:17.920 are to admit no more causes of natural things than 0:17:18.040 --> 0:17:22.760 such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances. 0:17:23.200 --> 0:17:26.159 Uh So a similar ideas, there's no need to add 0:17:26.160 --> 0:17:30.359 extra explanations when you already have an explanation that is 0:17:30.640 --> 0:17:34.920 number one true and number two explains everything you see. 0:17:35.160 --> 0:17:38.399 So an example of this might be why do the 0:17:38.440 --> 0:17:41.159 planets orbit the Sun? This would be something that Newton 0:17:41.160 --> 0:17:43.679 would be concerned with. Newton would say, okay, we know 0:17:43.720 --> 0:17:47.920 of two forces that explain what we see, gravity and inertia. 0:17:48.280 --> 0:17:51.159 Inertia is the tendency of an object in motion to 0:17:51.280 --> 0:17:55.320 stay in motion. Gravity is the mutually attracting force between 0:17:55.359 --> 0:17:59.400 two objects with mass. So, because of inertia, the planets 0:17:59.440 --> 0:18:02.040 flying through space want to keep traveling in a straight 0:18:02.040 --> 0:18:05.560 line at a constant speed. And because of gravity, instead 0:18:05.560 --> 0:18:08.479 of traveling in a straight line, their path bends around 0:18:08.520 --> 0:18:12.080 towards the Sun as they travel. And so that those 0:18:12.080 --> 0:18:15.399 two things are both true and they explain everything we observe, 0:18:15.560 --> 0:18:17.960 not now actually not quite everything, but they were good 0:18:18.040 --> 0:18:22.480 enough for Newton's time explaining everything. You might also say, though, 0:18:22.520 --> 0:18:25.760 that maybe in addition to gravity and inertia, there are 0:18:25.800 --> 0:18:29.320 angels that guide the planets in their orbits because those 0:18:29.320 --> 0:18:32.800 elliptical pathways are pleasing to the Lord. But if somebody 0:18:32.800 --> 0:18:35.480 proposes that you're you're kind of stuck because there's no 0:18:35.560 --> 0:18:38.960 way to prove the angel hypothesis wrong. You can't say 0:18:39.000 --> 0:18:42.920 there aren't invisible angels guiding the planets. But pretty much 0:18:42.920 --> 0:18:45.800 everybody today, I think, even people who believe in angels 0:18:46.160 --> 0:18:49.320 in some sense, would not see any reason to believe 0:18:49.400 --> 0:18:52.800 that there are angels doing that because there are other 0:18:52.880 --> 0:18:57.160 explanations which do all the explaining that needs to be done. Right. Yeah, 0:18:57.160 --> 0:18:59.199 I mean once you drag angels into it too, it 0:18:59.200 --> 0:19:02.240 it opens up the or for just a never ending 0:19:02.280 --> 0:19:05.200 list of reasons why the angels can't be detected or 0:19:05.240 --> 0:19:07.720 why the you know, well, why the angel wanted, why 0:19:07.760 --> 0:19:10.320 the planet seems to be behaving this way. It's in 0:19:10.359 --> 0:19:13.760 accordance with these known laws rather than the machinations of 0:19:13.800 --> 0:19:17.360 a divine being right, and you don't need to appeal 0:19:17.440 --> 0:19:20.600 in any way to the additional plausibility of angels or not. 0:19:20.720 --> 0:19:23.200 Like the reason I said that even people who otherwise 0:19:23.280 --> 0:19:26.880 believe in angels don't say that they're guiding the motions 0:19:26.880 --> 0:19:29.520 of the planets is you don't need them to explain that. 0:19:30.000 --> 0:19:32.720 You've just got basic laws of physics that explain what 0:19:32.760 --> 0:19:35.359 the planets are doing. There's no reason to add an 0:19:35.400 --> 0:19:38.240 angel's explanation. It doesn't do anymore work. Yeah, it doesn't 0:19:38.280 --> 0:19:41.600 even help angels out right, No, I mean, yeah, it's there. 0:19:41.760 --> 0:19:43.959 There's just no point in it now. Of course, sticking 0:19:43.960 --> 0:19:45.840 on the theory of like the motions of the planets 0:19:45.840 --> 0:19:47.760 for a minute, of course, we would have to later 0:19:47.840 --> 0:19:50.240 come up with a more refined theory of gravity for 0:19:50.280 --> 0:19:53.160 those rare cases where Newton's theory of gravity would fail, 0:19:53.680 --> 0:19:56.760 and we would get that with Einstein and general relativity, 0:19:56.800 --> 0:20:01.040 which recharacterized gravity is the curvature of space time caused 0:20:01.040 --> 0:20:03.879 by deformation due to mass, rather than as a mutually 0:20:03.920 --> 0:20:07.040 attractive force between objects. Though in most cases if you 0:20:07.119 --> 0:20:09.840 think of it as a force in in the Newtonian sense, 0:20:09.840 --> 0:20:12.800 your predictions work out just fine. But from an article 0:20:12.880 --> 0:20:15.280 that I want to refer to later by a philosopher 0:20:15.320 --> 0:20:19.040 named Elliott sober Uh, he writes, quote Albert Einstein spoke 0:20:19.119 --> 0:20:21.800 for many when he said quote, it can scarcely be 0:20:21.960 --> 0:20:25.280 denied that the supreme goal of all theory is to 0:20:25.359 --> 0:20:29.040 make the irreducible basic elements as simple and as few 0:20:29.080 --> 0:20:33.080 as possible without having to surrender the adequate representation of 0:20:33.119 --> 0:20:36.359 a single datum of experience, which in a way is 0:20:36.480 --> 0:20:40.679 again articulating something like Ockham's razor. It's saying like, you 0:20:40.720 --> 0:20:45.159 want the simplest possible explanation that explains everything. And if 0:20:45.200 --> 0:20:47.959 we're sticking with Einstein for a minute, to go beyond 0:20:48.200 --> 0:20:50.480 positing something like angels, if if you want to go 0:20:50.520 --> 0:20:54.320 into real scientific hypotheses in history, there are all kinds 0:20:54.320 --> 0:20:56.920 of things that you might argue we're sort of done 0:20:56.920 --> 0:21:01.000 away with by an Occam's razor issue kind of process. 0:21:01.040 --> 0:21:03.679 Though I think there are some historians and philosophers of 0:21:03.680 --> 0:21:06.200 science that might disagree there. But one example that comes 0:21:06.200 --> 0:21:08.760 to my mind is the luminiferous ether. You know, it 0:21:08.840 --> 0:21:12.000 was once believed by many scientists that there had to 0:21:12.000 --> 0:21:16.280 be a medium in space through which light propagates, right, 0:21:16.320 --> 0:21:18.800 the same way that if you want sound to propagate, 0:21:18.800 --> 0:21:21.240 there's no sound in space, right, You've got to have 0:21:21.359 --> 0:21:24.800 sound traveling through a medium like air, or like water, 0:21:25.040 --> 0:21:27.840 or like a you know, like a steel wire. There 0:21:27.880 --> 0:21:30.919 must be matter to transmit that energy, and so the 0:21:30.960 --> 0:21:34.720 idea was that space was filled with this stuff, this ether, 0:21:34.960 --> 0:21:39.280 that light waves propagated through. And eventually, due to Einstein 0:21:39.400 --> 0:21:41.919 and to other thinkers and experiments it it started to 0:21:42.119 --> 0:21:45.840 become clear that the ether was superfluous. You didn't need 0:21:45.920 --> 0:21:48.720 it to explain any of the properties of light. Now, 0:21:48.760 --> 0:21:52.560 there's another example from history that often comes up when 0:21:52.600 --> 0:21:55.320 people talk about Okam's razor. It's often brought up as 0:21:55.359 --> 0:21:58.919 a great example of Akam's razor being applied. But we're 0:21:58.960 --> 0:22:01.000 gonna get to an article later on that I think 0:22:01.040 --> 0:22:04.600