Occam's razor

the idea of least complexity is bullshit because simplicity is subjective. the idea of fewest assumptions is ok though

>>9090596
I don't know anyone who thinks of Occam's razor as anything more than a heuristics.

>>9090599
>complexity is bullshit because simplicity is subjective
No.

>>9090599
Wouldn't zero assumptions leave everything possible.

Most of the time it isn't applied in a strict mathematical sense, but instead in a rhetorical sense.

What if extra assumptions leads to more elegance?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unlambda

What if the fewer number of assumptions are more demanding than many less-demanding assumptions?

>>9090606
I see it it quoted every now and then on /sci/

It seems like people learned how to argue/debate from watching atheist vs religion debates.

>>9090630
Yeah, but /sci/ is quickly spiraling into full retardation. Hopefully things will get better once the summer ends, but I doubt it.

>>9090634
Intelligence is scarce, that's for sure.

There are a lot of peacocks trying to fake it.

Makes me want to go back to Uni; at least the concentration of smart people is higher there.

>>9090596
It's not, it's just an easy check in your reasoning.

>>9090652
I don't know how it was in your time, but you might be in for a shock.

>>9090719
It would be grad-school for math or theoretical-comp-sci.

I actually had more fun talking with the professors than the kiddos.

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>>9090596
>Why do people act like Occam's razor is a rigorous proof method?
What was Okcham attempting to figure when conceiving of the Occam's Razor principle?

I have some entity attempting to tell me that the conclusion is that Satan is God, with the following logic:
> Christ was the Son of God
> He was the Messiah
> Upon his baptism he was permitted (by God) to be tempted by Satan, and Satan told him to pray to Satan and Jesus would own all land
> Jesus did not pray to Satan
> Instead of taking over the land of earth, Jesus was murdered in a gruesome manner

>>9090599
because fewer assumptions isnt less complexity.

>>9090615
>given the maximum likelihood.

and tfw no one has heard of this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_description_length

also look at how geoffrey hinton proved that for parameters that maximise the likelihood of observing a set of data, the free energy or complexity will be minimised. and this is formally equivalent to minimising the difference between the prior and a posteriori in bayesian inference.

so yes ockhams razor can actually be justified but obviously it depends on whether you are correctly judging data and parameters etc which i suspect is difficult for us in our limited perspectives.

hintons idea of free energy is very interesting because using his idea, he developed algorithms where rather than trying to estimate the actual causes of data, its just as effective to use approximate causes and minimise the free energy in order to develop a model that maximises the likelihood of observing some data. this has in later cases been called a helmholtz machine after helmholtz free energy in physics and also helmholtz' idea of unconscious inference in psychology because now this model is being used to describe how the brain works.

>>9090630
quite tard. i was there in the brain thread
fuck off psued

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>>9090634
It's actually right-wing shills if you can believe it

Ask yourself why a racial IQ differences and climate change thread stay on /sci/ 365 days a year?

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>>9090596
Mathematicians who write 500 pages proof are completely against Occam's Razor.
There are a lot of Mathematicians who obscure things explaining simple things in a over complicated way that only the author understands.

>>9091606
That's not at odds with Occam's razor.
A concept can be simple, yet difficult to explain to someone who doesn't understand it.

>>9090606
My professor used Occam's razor in Quantum Physics to dismiss the existence of hidden variables.

>>9090596

> Why do people[Who?] act like Occam's razor is a rigorous proof method?

>>9091594
Yeah, 4chan was anarcho communist website before the damn trump right wing shills arrived!
take your meds

>>9090630
>>9090606

Occam's razor is more than a heuristic. To deny that it is valid is to deny empirical thought. Occam's razor is the rebuttal to skeptics. It is the axiom of science.

No matter how good a given experiment is, one can always say "hurrr what if invisible aliens sabotaged it? you can't prove they didn't." They wouldn't be wrong unless you accept that Occam's razor makes them wrong.

Occam's razor is saying that there is an objective universe that it is possible to understand.

When an atheist uses the concept of Occam's razor in an argument about religion, they are saying "What you are arguing is absurd because you are denying reasonable explanations for things"

>>9092450

That doesn't mean he was wrong you nanobrain.

>>9091606

Just because someone is good at math does not mean that they don't believe any irrational things.

>>9092493
The amount of pseudism in this post hurts me.

>>9090740

> schitzoposting

>>9091606
You have no clue what you're talking about.

>>9092515

>pseudism

yeah I don't know what that word means

>>9092524
You do.

Abductive reasoning which includes Occam's razor is like inductive reasoning. It is used to approximate the most accurate beliefs possible, but it is hardly fool proof.

IE: Always use known phenomena to explain new phenomena. Therefore, the brain should be the source of awareness. Ah, but what if it were the soul instead?

>>9092537

Why don't you try that on your exams this year

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>>9092493
And what about the possible existence of invisible life from other planets with the desire and capacity to sabotage is not objective?

If I had no knowledge nor access to computers; I was to speculate about the workings of a computer, and I am told that it is the controlled movement and measurement of fundamental particles passed through chemically-etched silicon wafers connected by metal wires fed information by the magnetic state of a spinning disk that can speak to other computers through long strips of glass that carry communications made of light. I assume that it's just a box full of many rolls of film and a projector, and the mouse pneumatically controls the mechanization of the film spools in such a way that produced the experience of using a computer.
Apply Occams razor, and my assumption being much more simple and more likely prevails.
If Occams razor was axiomatic to the scientific method, no experiment would ever get past the stage of the first hypothesis as any additions or refinements to the hypothesis would necessarily add complexity and speculation to the original.

>>9092455
nu atheists

>>9092549

> And what about the possible existence of invisible life from other planets with the desire and capacity to sabotage is not objective?

It is obviously not plausible. That's what Occam's razor allows me to say.

> I assume that it's just a box full of many rolls of film and a projector, and the mouse pneumatically controls the mechanization of the film spools in such a way that produced the experience of using a computer.

Your hypothetical scenario doesn't make sense. It isn't that hard of a concept.

>>9092551

Because when it comes down to

>A:"You have no legit evidence for the existence of God."
>B:"I choose to believe in God anyway."

That's denying the validity of Occam's razor.

>>9092612
I can use Occam's razor to support the belief in God.
The fine-tuning problem produces in an improbability for our existence(sentient beings in a universe). You can explain away this improbability with a multiverse, but there is no evidence of such a thing. The belief with the least amount of assumptions about reality would in a universe that is intelligently designed.

What about Walter Chatton's anti-razor?

>"Whenever an affirmative proposition is apt to be verified for actually existing things, if two things, howsoever they are present according to arrangement and duration, cannot suffice for the verification of the proposition while another thing is lacking, then one must posit that other thing."

>>9092633

So now you are basing your argument on creationist "science".

Without even going into if this dubious fine-tuning business is true or not, it does not imply intelligent design.

Gods don't show up in science. There is absolutely no reason to believe that if physical constants had to be fine tuned in order for the universe to "work," a sentient being with special powers would have to "create" them that way.

A more reasonable explanation would be they are like that because of an undetermined property of the universe.

>>9092682
A more reasonable explanation is that there is some since undiscovered mathematical equation which a glimpse of is entirely beyond the scope of the imagination..?
Or more rationally, one can envision a multitude of potential universes with different parameters which do not produce life.

>>9092493
Occam's razor is holding science back with its irrationality.

>>9092694

No, it could be entirely possible to figure it out what this property of the universe is. It is also a possibility that it isn't possible to know, or will never be known. All I'm saying is there is no scientific reason to believe that it was some sentient being that set them deliberately.

Maybe you can envision some kind of parallel universe arrangement, but that doesn't mean that's how the universe works. The main reason why we have the concept of Gods in the first place is probably because they are easy for humans to visualize.

>>9092635

> Whenever an affirmative proposition is apt to be verified for actually existing things,

I don't think that is valid english

>>9092729
It may not be empirically valid, but empirical philosophy is based upon inductive reasoning anyway. Rationality should encompass all of human reasoning.
Sorry man, but it seems like common sense to me. If I change the values of a few figures, then life as we know it can not exist. There are vastly many more universes without life than with it. Based on our current knowledge base, one would reason that the reason for this improbability is not chance, but rather is intentional.

>>9090596
>muh atheism
>muh reddit
literally the only reason

>>9092589
>Your hypothetical scenario doesn't make sense.

You enter 2 on your keyboard, the computer selects the film to display the number 2. You enter +, the film for + is is displayed, you enter 2 on your computer, 2 is displayed. Press enter and the computer displays the film that mechanically lines up with "2" "+" "2" which is "= 4". This would be the simplest explanation for how a computer works having no knowledge of its inner machinations, far more simple and with far less assumptions than guessing how it actually works. Occams razor is a heuristic. It's a tool for figuring the best guess out of a series of guesses. It doesn't approach truth or deduction and makes no attempt to do so.

>>9092739

> Imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, “This is an interesting world I find myself in, an interesting hole I find myself in, fits me rather neatly, doesn’t it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!” This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, it’s still frantically hanging on to the notion that everything’s going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this may be something we need to be on the watch out for.

You fool yourself into thinking that this is a question of probability

>>9092748
That's just silly rhetoric.
We find ourselves, self-aware entities, in a universe engineered for them. There is something called pattern recognition, which is something you clearly lack.

>>9092758
>pattern recognition: the magic ability to deduce wild fairies in the sky based on a single data point

>>9092745

Occam's razor does not even apply in that situation

>>9092758

The only places in the universe where intelligent life appears are places where conditions are right for intelligent life to appear.

Doesn't seem that unlikely. It actually seems pretty certain.

>>9092758
>We find ourselves, self-aware entities, in a universe allowing for our existence.
FTFY. Basic survivor bias; we wouldn't be here to contemplate the universe if it weren't capable of developing life. 100% of all possible self-aware entities will observe a universe that had the values just right for their development.

>>9092785
There are two explanations as for how a computer got 2 + 2 = 4 to appear on a screen, one of the complicated and unintuitive-seeming way it works, and the other of my own guess abould reels of films. Occams razor says the second choice is most valid.

>>9092758
>universe is engineered to produce intelligent humans like us

Dunno seems pretty far fetched to me. How is it possible to engineer such a thing and why would a councils being do it?

Far simpler just to accept that things are the way they are because there's no other way they could be.

>>9092732
>I have never read Aristotle and am therefore unfamiliar with the terms actual and potential existence

>>9092739
>>9092724

but occams razor is proved in machine learning

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>>9093198
>using science that is about 2500 years out of date.

>>9093225
>Occam's Razor

>>9092810

Occam's razor does not imply the most simple explanation is always correct. It says that the explanation supported by the most evidence is always assumed to be correct.

>>9093256
No. Occam's razor is a prescription to minimize ontological assumptions. That is, between two explanations, if both achieve the same results, then the explanation which stipulates fewer entities is preferable to the one which stipulates more.

>>9093282

If you have evidence for something it is no longer an assumption.

>>9093288
Yeah sorry, I misunderstood your post before. I thought you were saying that Occam's razor was the statement "the explanation supported by the most evidence is always assumed to be correct". Carry on.

>>9090596
its just an encouragement to keep things simple enough so that they are testable.

>>9093298
That's not the reason why it was devised. Occam's razor was devised within the framework of scholastic debate, and was a means of comparing assumptions. It is first and foremost a tool for theory building, not experimentation.

>>9093241
>minimum description length

faggot

>>9090719
If you're going to study anything remotely rigorous you'll generally be around pretty smart people.
Universities are full of retards, but retards can't into the sciences.

>>9093321
MDL is just a formalization of Occam's razor. It's still a Medieval principle, which in no way makes it wrong. My point is precisely that the age of an idea is not something to its discredit.

>>9093327
Is this your attempt at humor? Science degrees are flooded by pseuds.

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>>9092474
It's not about their beliefs retard, it's about the continuous reposting and endless bumping of threads that somehow always happen to be the breitbart talking points of the day

>>9093337
Dunno where you went to school but that's not how it is everywhere.

>>9093348
I went to McGill and people there were retarded.

>>9092748
>water flows downhill
>it also evaporates
>this somehow proves multiverse theory
Puddle quote needs to die and people need to think instead of copy pasting it.

>>9093511

Straw man.

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>>9092748
Is there an argument somewhere hidden in there? Because a thought experiment should accompany an argument, otherwise this is just poetry.

>>9090630
>It seems like people learned how to argue/debate from watching atheist vs religion debates.
Because that's exactly what happened.

>>9093643
>>9093511

The puddle thinks that the hole it is in is engineered for it as the shitposter thinks the world is engineered for him.

>>9093677
If I were 12 I would think the puddle story was deep. However, I now know that profundity is a sure sign of vacuity.

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>>9093690

> vacuity

>>9092799
>>9092795
>>9092780

You guys seem to miss the basics of the fine-tuning argument.
If we change the parameters of the constants of nature just a tiny bit, life as we know it could not exist. If we begin to imagine potential universes with different values, there are vastly many more that do not allow for life than ones that do.
Of course, people like to argue about "life as we know it" to skew the probability, but I am skeptical of other outlandish forms of life. Silicon based makes sense to some degree, but even then that would make a small window of universes that produce life.

>>9094418

> If we change the parameters of the constants of nature just a tiny bit, life as we know it could not exist.

If it is true, which it probably isn't

You assume that physical constants are totally arbitrary instead of dependent on each other or something else.

>>9094418
But we can't find ourselves in any of those other universes. Life is an emergent property of this kind of universe, so we obviously have to observe ourselves being in one like it.

There are many more ways to lose a lottery than to win it, but it's not surprising that someone will win it.

>>9094418
>"life as we know it"
If life could exist in significantly different forms then the moon would be crawling with mooncritters.

>>9094454
If someone is struck by lightning does that make it a likely event for a human being?
Probability, my friend.

>>9094454
Congrats you have won 1 lottery. Click here to claim your prize.
As a lottery winner are you more likely to find yourself in a universe where there is a 1/2 chance of winning the lottery or in one where there is a 1/100 chance of winning?

>>9094461
Who said it's likely? We've already made the observation that we're alive, i.e. we've already been struck by lightning. It is not then valid to conclude that we must have been chosen to be struck by lightning based on prior probabilities.

>>9090596
My understanding of it is that it's used to determine the starting hypothesis

>>9094503
Prior probability is irrelevant with a one time event such as the creation of the universe, so we compare our universe with other potential universes.
If one person is struck by lightning it's no big coincidence. But if everyone is struck by lightning we would think there is probably an underlying phenomena causing it.

>>9094579
But the simple fact of observing and being alive means that you've already been "struck by lightning", it's a necessary condition for you to be thinking about it in the first place.

In what meaningful way can you distinguish between people who are alive and people who were never alive in the same way that you distinguish ones who were or were not struck by lightning? Being struck by lightning is not an essential part of a person's nature, as being alive is.