To explain events and evaluate conspiracy theories, do you include applying Occam's Razor?

[CreekDog]

Very simplified:

"Simplest solution is usually the correct one."

Somewhat simplified:

When competing hypotheses are equal in other respects, the principle recommends selection of the hypothesis that introduces the fewest assumptions and postulates the fewest entities while still sufficiently answering the question.

Simplified it's this way:

When competing hypotheses are equal in other respects, the principle recommends selection of the hypothesis that introduces the fewest assumptions and postulates the fewest entities while still sufficiently answering the question.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor

-------------------------------------------------------

For example if I read the following conspiracy theory:

DTV Transition

Some theorists claim that forced transition to Digital television broadcasting is practical realization of "Big Brother" concept. They claim that miniature cameras and microphones are built into Set-top boxes and newer TV sets to spy on people. Another claim describes use of mind control technology that would be hidden in the digital signal and used to subvert the mind and feelings of the people and for subliminal advertising.<31> (source wikipedia)


First, I separate what I think is possible from what I actually believe and this is where Occam's Razor comes in handy.

If the above conspiracy were possible, I don't know if it is, before believing it, I need to think about what would be required for it to be true or at least believable:

1) assuming such a thing could be kept secret such that it could be happening, yet with all evidence of it happening completely concealed and kept secret. (huge assumption)

2) assuming it's possible.
3) assuming it's a practical end for the people who want it AND that those people have the ability to make millions of others cooperate (in secret) to accomplish it.

Finally, in my mind all along has been the practical explanation for it. The undisputed reasons for going to Digital TV signals and there are many. They may not be good, but as reasons they do explain why such a decision would be made.

And my conclusion is based on the concept my friend called, "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence". My take is "the bolder the claim, the greater evidence required before I'll believe it over more conventional explanations."

Occam's Razor comes into play because I will choose evidence-based explanation over assumption-based explanations nearly every time.

Want to tell me that Digital TV is a conspiracy, offer no evidence, just a bunch of hypotheses combined with the assumption everyone involved (hundreds of thousands likely) is keeping it a secret? Well, compared to explanations that have evidence behind them, I'm going to go with the evidence based claim.

If you want me to believe a conspiracy theory, you need to turn those assumptions into evidence. Say you think they did something and it's being kept secret? Produce a document, get independent confirmation, get witnesses with *first-hand* knowledge. Get credible witnesses. Don't bring out some guy that's part of the 2012 project or whatever, don't give me Sylvia Browne, give me something real!

What do you think? It's not perfect as an approach, but it's better than just believing these things without comparing them to other explanations to see which involves the fewest acrobatics to have actually happened.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

1. When it comes to conspiracy theories, the opposite of Occam's Razor should be applied.

The more ridiculous the idea, the better.

Lee Harvey Oswald < Grassy Knoll < LBJ did it < it was suicide.

Planes were hi-jacked and crashed into WTC < planes were controlled by remote control and shot a missile into the WTC a split second before crashing into it < there were no planes < miniature nukes < those monsters from Rampage.

[CreekDog]

3. Okay, but were you my sole no-vote thus far?

It mainly matters to me because your post is so ironic.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

7. I've been paid by Monsanto to be ironic.

[CreekDog]

13. I don't believe that Monsanto would pay you to be ironic

given your track record at it. :hide:

:rofl: :P

[FLPanhandle]

6. LOL

That does seem to be the case. The number of people that fall for things like "The moon landings were faked" and "UFO's are full of aliens using anal probes on us" just shows how few critical thinking skills are developed.

[readmoreoften]

2. Occam's razor best explains natural phenomena/causation, but it can't capture political machinations

The truth is the truth, and the "simplest" answer can be a macguffin when it comes to crimes. Including state crimes.

[CreekDog]

4. It's not about which is true, it's about what you are willing to believe is true

and is your belief of evidence-based explanation trumped by an assumption-based explanation?

this application is NOT limited to scientific phenomena by the way.

an event's characteristics can be described empirically whether they are a scientific issue or a social one.

scientifically you can evaluated whether someone said something or did something with accompanying evidence versus *positing* that they did or said something else without such evidence.

[readmoreoften]

32. No. The truth is the truth, independent of what I am "willing to believe."

Believability is irrelevant in true or false. If a political agent rigs an election, they either did or or not. There will be evidence that they did or evidence that they didn't. At this point, Occam's razor can be used: if there is motive and evidence of the commission of a crime, there is reasonable suspicion. If there is no motive and evidence, there is no reasonable suspicion. What amount of "suspicion" is reasonable is always up for discussion.

But those who invoke Occam's razor with no evidence (i.e.: No bother to investigate, there's no crime committed, Occam's razor says candidate X just lost the election, etc.) is no more critically sound than those who see a criminal act. In other words, Occam's razor cuts both ways.

[CreekDog]

36. Believability is irrelevant in true or false, but not irrelevant when one is not 100% sure of truth

that's why what I'm saying is relevant.

you act as though there's a card dispenser where you press a button and out pops a card that says what the 100% truth is and one can choose whether or not to believe that truth.

wrong.

And my OP stated repeatedly about using Occam's Razor on the basis of evidence over something less than evidence.

The only way Occam's Razor leads you to trump evidence is if the evidence is questionable or paper thin, inconclusive versus and explanation that is apparently sound and can be verified.

[ngant17]

16. excellent point about Occam's razor

criminal conspiracies may be inherently complex, such as the Madoff financial scandal, a $50 billion dollar scheme that fooled a lot of savvy investors.

I'd also agree that using Occam's razor on the JFK killing, it would hardly work to say the LHO fit the simplest answer to the mystery. It was only simple because the Warren Commission fabricated the evidence to create the appearance of a single assassin or "lone nut".

A lot of the historical evidence that would point to other reasons, this was hidden from the public.

[CreekDog]

18. I might not rule out a theory, but I'm not willing to believe it until there is evidence

and saying there's evidence that you or I haven't seen and based belief on that is exactly what I'm getting at as being problematic.

[wtmusic]

21. The Madoff scheme was astoundingly simple - that's why it worked.

Promise a lot of people they'll get rich quick. Lie to them. Assume (correctly) that most will never follow up.

That scam is played out everyday; Madoff just happened to get farther than most. One is happening on Wall St. right now that we'll be reading about next year.

[ngant17]

26. simple perhaps, but quite effective for a time

New investor money was paid to older investors .... as their "profits" ... as long as you keep getting new investors, things worked out , i.e., classic pyramid .... but once the economy turned south ... people started wanting to cash out .... and there was no money to pay them...

Madoff was trusted because he was part of the Palm Beach society circuit. Trust doesn't factor into Occam's razor.

[Euromutt]

38. I disagree; let me cite an example

The father of a friend of mine was a serious conspiracy theorist, and one of the many theories he subscribed to was that the Allied landings at Salerno (Operation Avalanche) were betrayed to the Germans, due to 16th German Panzer Division being already deployed in defensive positions covering the landing zones. In fact, as the first wave of 36th US Inf Div approached the shore, they were greeted by loudspeakers announcing in English "Come on in and give up. We have you covered." The 16th PzDiv was joined within two days by most of the rest of the 10th German Army; another two days later, 10th Army launched a counter-offensive, which came dangerously close to eliminating the Allied beach head.

Now that does sound pretty damning, until you consider that the coast of south-western Italy doesn't have many beaches suitable for an amphibious assault, and that the Bay of Salerno has the suitable beach closest to Naples while still being within operating range of Allied aircraft stationed in Sicily. Very simply, Colonel-General von Vietinghoff deployed his divisions to cover all likely landing sites (of which there were very few to begin with), keeping a mobile reserve available to quickly reinforce whichever site at which the Allies proved to place their main effort. In short, the course of events can be more than adequately explained without invoking the specter of betrayal, and the application of Occam's Razor tells us that, absent any concrete (non-circumstantial) evidence, we should not do so.

[Quantess]

5. Is there a name for the principle

that whatever explanation involves someone gaining money and/or power is probably the correct one?

[zipplewrath]

8. Golden rule

He who has the gold, makes the rules.

With the "follow the money" correlary. i.e. if you wanna know who was involved, follow the money trail.

[Echo In Light]

10. No, b/c that's waaayy too obvious re most crimes of america's corp/state nexus - can't have that!

[CreekDog]

11. is that how you operate?

is that how most people you know operate?

if not, then you are saying that this principle doesn't apply to most people in your universe (and mine) but somehow applies to everyone who is wealthy and powerful.

which would suggest some sort of Darwinian explanation behind who is wealthy and powerful and that they have traits that the rest of us lack, those traits allowing them to subvert us.

i'm slightly negatory on your idea, as appealing as it is in some respects.

[Quantess]

22. Money and power are common motives of dishonest behavior, do you not agree?

Especially money.

I'm an honest person, and I assume most people are generally honest. But then, I'm not behind any conspiracies.

[CreekDog]

25. Motive is not enough if I have another explanation with evidence

I don't deny the motives, but they don't trump an evidence-based causal explanation. Certainly not motives without evidence.

Remember we are contrasting conspiracy theories without evidence with explanations that have evidence.

If you have no evidence and no explanations, motives are useful, but that's not what I'm talking about here.

[Sebastian Doyle]

12. Yes.

It's called the "Bush Crime Family Razor".

[wtmusic]

17. I dunno, but excluding sex makes it severely deficient. nt

[gravity]

24. US flag makers were responsible for engineering 9/11

[BootinUp]

9. Of course not

How can I employ the Kevin Bacon six degrees of separation to believe a conspiracy theory if I use Occam's Razor?
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
. :sarcasm:

[Echo In Light]

14. Since Reagan/Bush, every admin has advanced the police state infrastructure

So, applying Occam's Razor would indicate that the chances of that occurring purely due to random happenstance is highly unlikely, and that, in fact, the Big Players of the corporate/state nexus, always involved in various illegal/immoral/scandals/cover ups, are indeed advancing a very real agenda.

That's a simplified layout of the postulation, but it sticks.

[wtmusic]

15. Paranoia sometimes endows others with superhuman abilities

in regards to keeping secrets and organizing, and generate preposterous motives and incentives when more promising ones are plainly available.

The most effective conspiracies are ones that are completely out in the open, but present a false purpose to the public.

No secrets necessary.

[GreenMetalFlake]

19. Yes! Hidden in plain sight

[CreekDog]

20. The concern I had about a small minority in this community now seems to be broadly held

:(

[CJCRANE]

23. I prefer Sherlock's Razor:

"When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth".

[Euromutt]

27. I actually rather liked Douglas Adams' take on that

That is, via the character of Dirk Gently (in Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency), who in a sense applies Occam's Razor to Holmes' maxim. Gently argues that the "impossible" merely requires the existence of some phenomenon of which we are presently unaware, whereas the "improbable" may require the assumption of some highly contrived explanation involving a lot of implausible assumptions about motive et al.

[CreekDog]

28. Is what I've said SOOOO outlandish to warrant so many unrecommends?

Is Occam's Razor such a bad approach that it's a bad idea to even suggest it?

If so, what's sometimes wrong about this place is more widespread than I imagined.

[Euromutt]

29. Let's not forget to apply "Hanlon's Razor"

To wit "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity" (or, in some variations, incompetence).

Or as Bernard Ingham (former press secretary to Margaret Thatcher) put it "Cock-up before conspiracy."

[CJCRANE]

30. What if Occam's Razor

leads you to believe things which contradict the common perception?

For instance, (in 2003) that Saddam didn't have WMD?

Or (prior to 2008) that the economy was going to tank soon (perhaps deliberately)?

[CreekDog]

34. there wasn't empirical evidence of WMD in Iraq

there was empirical evidence of potential economic disruption prior to 2008.

Occam's Razor can certainly lead you to question common perceptions.

[ismnotwasm]

31. Kind of

I know a few people who are pretty far out there. They have a couple of things in common, and one seems to be anti-semitism, the other that the government is bad, and is involved in anything bad that happens, period. They use a weird kind of reductionism to get there but have gaping logic and information holes.

Ask them to fill in the holes, and they get mad, defensive and run off into another tangent and hint at having 'special' knowledge. These aren't the most stable people I know. Prisonplanet types.

So I guess I do, when I get to the extent I want to know the truth of any conspiracy. I would love to ignore them, but far too many people actually blindly believe things like the mass e-mailings they get, some of which seem so ridiculous as to be harmless, but quite possibly have a harmful cumulative effect on the process of getting good information.


Coincidently, I'm reading "The Illuminatus Trilogy" by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson. Hard to read I suppose, but hilarious conspiracy theory fiction.

[RagAss]

33. No...I write software for a living...it's never the fewest assumptions !!!

[guardian]

35. Does an electric razor count? n/t

[Greyhound]

37. I was just glad when he got the granite pizza. n/t

[Euromutt]

39. Conspiracy theories typically require some major--and not very plausible--assumptions

The first and foremost is that the conspirators have to have the fiendish cunning required to keep all the actual evidence of the conspiracy covered up, while at the same time being sufficiently stupid to miss the incongruities that supposedly betray the presence of a conspiracy.

Second, the conspirators have to have at their disposal a large number of cloning vats capable of producing large numbers of low-level operatives at short notice, and cryogenic storage tanks capable of holding them when they're no longer needed (for now, at least). Because there's no other way to ensure that nobody involved will ever let something slip and not have any questions raised about why several hundred G.I.'s (and/or federal agents, construction workers, FedEx employees, whatever) went missing without a trace or, worse, why they turned up in this mass grave in Nevada.
(Example: Roswell UFO incident. Despite a large number of 509th Bomb Group personnel being involved in the recovery of the "weather balloon," over the next thirty years, not one ever let slip--e.g. while inebriated--that whatever that stuff was that they recovered, it looked extraterrestrial. And if you buy into the claim of a massive military operation to recover multiple alien craft, the number of personnel involved increases exponentially.)

Third, and related to the second, is that the conspirators must not have personal concerns like those that affect normal people. (Example: the idea that "Big Pharma" has been suppressing the cure for cancer for years, if not decades, even though at least some of the conspirators must have had loved ones die of cancer during that time, who could putatively been saved.)

At the end of the day, we only have to look at the conspiracies that failed to remain secret, even though they should have been easier to keep under wraps than the ones that supposedly are being kept secret. Essentially, this boils down to "if nobody could keep a lid on Watergate, or Iran-Contra, or 'extraordinary renditions,' how the hell can anybody keep that secret?"

[ZombieHorde]

40. Yes, except for the conspiracy theories I believe in.