{"id":822,"date":"2006-12-07T19:34:00","date_gmt":"2006-12-08T00:34:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/?p=822"},"modified":"2006-12-08T06:05:18","modified_gmt":"2006-12-08T11:05:18","slug":"ockhams-razor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/2006\/12\/07\/ockhams-razor\/","title":{"rendered":"Ockham’s Razor"},"content":{"rendered":"
Thanks to friend Ralph for calling my attention to Ockham’s Razor<\/strong> ref<\/a><\/sub><\/strong>:<\/div>\n
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Occam’s razor is a principle attributed to the 14th-century English logician and Franciscan friar William of Ockham. Originally a tenet of the reductionist philosophy of nominalism, it is more often taken today as a heuristic maxim that advises economy, parsimony, or simplicity in scientific theories.<\/div>\n

Occam’s razor states that the explanation of any phenomenon should make as few assumptions as possible, eliminating, or "shaving off", those that make no difference in the observable predictions of the explanatory hypothesis or theory. In short, when given two equally valid explanations for a phenomenon, one should embrace the less complicated formulation. The principle is often expressed in Latin as the lex parsimoniae (law of succinctness):<\/p>\n

     entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem,<\/p>\n

which translates to:<\/p>\n

     entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity.<\/p>\n

This is often paraphrased as "All things being equal, the simplest solution tends to be the best one."<\/strong> In other words, when multiple competing theories are equal in other respects, the principle recommends selecting the theory that introduces the fewest assumptions and postulates the fewest hypothetical entities. It is in this sense that Occam’s razor is usually understood.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
If the Administration’s Middle Eastern adventures<\/strong><\/em> were really business ventures<\/strong><\/em>, how would being honest about that change things?<\/div>\n
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  • \n
    It would clarify Bush’s stubborn "stay the course" position. That would simply mean that he hasn’t given up his quest for oil.<\/div>\n<\/li>\n
  • \n
    Then "the only way to lose in Iraq would be to leave" becomes self explanatory.<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
    Cheney’s scheme was about America’s dictating the fate of Iraq’s oil resources – by conquest, or at the least by undue influence. That’s not ours to do. It seems to me that we have to repudiate that goal outright in both word and<\/u> deed – to lose<\/strong>! Then we can, perhaps, come to the table with the Insurgents<\/em><\/strong>, the Shia<\/em><\/strong>, the Sunni<\/strong><\/em>, the Provisional Government<\/em><\/strong>, and the United Nations<\/strong><\/em> to negotiate some kind of solution. So long as Bush and Cheney are in charge, it’s still a war over the Iraqi’s oil, and the fighting will never stop.<\/div>\n

    "All things being equal, the simplest solution tends to be the best one"<\/strong> means, in this case, to lose Bush and Cheney’s power play to control the natural resources of Iraq. They’re not ours to control…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Thanks to friend Ralph for calling my attention to Ockham’s Razor ref: Occam’s razor is a principle attributed to the 14th-century English logician and Franciscan friar William of Ockham. Originally a tenet of the reductionist philosophy of nominalism, it is more often taken today as a heuristic maxim that advises economy, parsimony, or simplicity in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-822","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/822","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=822"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/822\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}