Kevin Kelly on Occam's Razor

[gusl]

Kevin T. Kelly - Simplicity, Truth, and the Unending Game of Science

Kevin Kelly claims to explain why Ockham's razor is useful without resorting to "God was kind enough to make the world simple". Also, check out the brilliant cartoons!

What would you say is the traditional explanation for why Ockham's razor works?

Comments

[spoonless.livejournal.com]

I haven't read this yet (maybe when I get some more time) but here's my understanding of Occam's razor...

If you come up with n theories about how something works, and they all agree exactly with what you've seen up until that point... then any of them are going to work, so you might as well use the simplest. If there's something more complicated going on, then there are usually an infinite number of ways you could be wrong... so chances are that the other ways you choose to complicate your theory (with no experimental motivations) are likely to be wrong. After you've seen what the more complicated theory really is, then the original "simple" theory usually works just fine in a given domain and is still valid as an approximation, whereas the other more complicated theories are just plain wrong. So you might as well stick with the simplest from the beginning. Once you have reason to believe there is something more complicated, then you can complicate it... but it needs to be motivated by something (either experimental evidence or the need for consistancy of the theory) not just an arbitrary choice on your part. I don't know if this is the "traditional" explanation, but this is my explanation for why Occam's razor is important to use.

[bram.livejournal.com]

Principle of parsimony.

Given two equally supported theories, the one with more independent moving parts (adjustable parameters) gets less experimental confirmation per moving part than the simpler theory. If, like me, you follow Popper's idea that you don't confirm theories but falsify them, change to: a simpler theory is put under more risk of falsification per moving part.

[mathemajician.livejournal.com]

It says that simple things are more likely, or equivalently, complex things are less likely.

So what it is really claiming is an inverse relationship between our concept of probability and our concept of complexity. Thus one thing we can do is start with our concept of probability, and then say that something is complexity when it is very improbable. Essentially this is what we do in classical information theory when we define "information". Now if we define complexity in this way, then Occam's razor is true by definition assuming that we want the theory that is the most probable.

[smandal.livejournal.com]

Gustavo,

As the article reviews, all traditional arguments in favor of Ockham's Razor are essentially based on a mystical belief in the smoothness/elegance/parsimony of nature/God.

Thanks for the article -- it presents a novel viewpoint, based on something like coding.