A tangential distillation of Occam's Razor that I frequently find useful
is the dictum which was told to me (and I don't know who to attribute it
to):
"Don't assume malice where ignorance would suffice". This might also be
applied to the "IPC vs DC" thread of the past 2 days.



Occam's Razor
William of Occam (or Ockham) (1284-1347) was an English philosopher and theologian. His work on
knowledge, logic and scientific inquiry played a major role in the
transition from medieval to modern thought. He based scientific knowledge
on experience and self-evident truths, and on logical propositions
resulting from those two sources. In his writings, Occam stressed the
Aristotelian principle that entities must not be multiplied beyond what is necessary. This principle
became known as Occam's (or Ockham's) Razor or the law of parsimony. A
problem should be stated in its basic and simplest terms. In science, the
simplest theory that fits the facts of a problem is the one that should be
selected.
This rule is interpreted to mean that the simplest of two or more
competing theories is preferable and that an explanation for unknown
phenomena should first be attempted in terms of what is already known.
A real life example of Occam's Razor in practice goes as follows:
Crop circles began to be reported in the 1970s. Two interpretations were made of the
circles of matted grass. One was that flying saucers made the imprints.
The other was that someone (human) had used some sort of instruments to
push down the grass. Occam's Razor would say that given the lack of
evidence for flying saucers and the complexity involved in getting UFOs
from distant galaxies to arrive on earth (unseen and traveling faster than
the speed of light I suppose) the second interpretation is simplest. The
second explanation could be wrong, but until further facts present themself it remains the preferable theory. As it turns out, Occam's Razor was
right as two people admitted to making the original crop figures in the
1990s (and the rest have apparently been created by copy-cats). Despite
this fact, some people still ignore Occam's Razor and instead continue to
believe that crop circles are being created by flying saucers.
The simplest model is more likely to be correct--especially when we are

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