Monday, February 7, 2011

Occam's Razor - Ur doin it rong!

Of all the things that I have observed in my quest for understanding the human mind - is that humans will constantly blurt out things without knowing what the fuck they are talking about. It is a constant ordeal that someone will do this. You can bet money that the person you're talking to on the cell phone will do just this in the next few seconds.
It's Human nature.
But what we should not do is allow such ignorance to change the facts.

For some reason, as time goes on we forget that facts do not bend to the stupid, the ignorant, and the mentally incompetent. That because someone takes a tree and begins talking as if the tree was bubblegum, that does not make the tree any more chewy and delicious, nor does it make bubblegum wooden and leafy. One of these is a citation of the greatest description of human reasoning in the world, Occam's Razor.
Whenever I am in a discussion with some zealot fundie about some branch of science that they OBVIOUSLY don't understand, they will never fail to try an attempt at utilizing Occam's Razor in order to somehow say that, since "God dun it" is simpler than the highly complex mathematical equations and the piles of evidence and data gathered on the subject, then Occam's Razor says that God must have magically proofed this universe out of nothing.

This is the point where I usually throw a fit in my head. Picture, if you will, the feeling of opening your head and dumping broken glass into your brain, and then screwing back on your cranium. That is my exact feeling on the matter.
Firstly, that's not the correct application of Occam's Razor. It is not that the simplest answer is the correct one, but the most SIMPLE and LOGICAL answer is the correct one. Thus, the theory of *insert topic here* is the choice, because saying that an unprovable and incomprehensible Magic Cloud Man did it is illogical (and, frankly, just plain lazy).[example]
SECONDLY - that's not even what OCCAM'S RAZOR IS. Occam's Razor is nothing more than the  definition of a mental path our mind automatically takes when confronted with several possible options - in which case the mind will take the least logical option and automatically remove it from the list of possible solutions. [def]
It's a DESCRIPTION of something that happens AUTOMATICALLY. It is not a reasoning tool. It is not an argument. Your brain does this every single time it is presented with conflicting or alternate options - it will automatically shake off any illogical options without notice or permission.

In short - please realize this: Occam's Razor is a description of an automatic process.

8 comments:

  1. please change the background bro.

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  2. LOL, I'm the same for blurting stuff out. I think its just a need to fit in.
    Good blog bud but Can you change the background or the text before my eyeballs melt out please?

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  3. I can barely read your post, you need to choose a different font color bro.

    As for the post, I was never one for philosophy, but I'll continue reading

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  4. I would like to say that your blog by far is the most interesting yet. I hope you find mine as interesting as I find yours.

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  5. Man your blog is almost unreadable with this bg, consider changing it?

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  6. This could be interesting. I enjoy philosophical stuff
    And I'm with hexxxen, you're gonna want to change the text color, background, or make it so it isn't transparent. Trying to read this is painful

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  7. Happened to run across this blog and after highlighting your text i was able to read it lol. But I am liking what i see good insight into how people are actually thinking hope to read more in the future

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  8. Interesting piece. Just finished watching an episode of BBC Horizon on this kind of subject. Will blog about it later on :)

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