26 Comments
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David Perlmutter's avatar

"...way more ways a system can be disordered than ways it can be ordered...."

And probably even more than the 15 different ways John Tanner of the The Five Royales boasted he could get to his girlfriend's house on their record "Right Around The Corner" (Double meanings in R&B song lyrics personify Ockham and the Razor perfectly).

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David Perlmutter's avatar

Yep, that's the one. Lowman Pauling, the bass singer/guitarist, wrote most of their tunes, and he liked doing that in the lyrics...

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Andrew Smith's avatar

I like it. I would include this in proto-punk too, in a way: it has a ripping fast drum track with no time for BS, and both the music and lyrics are all up in your face.

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Andrew Sniderman 🕷️'s avatar

I frequently think about Entropy when I’m scrambling eggs. Also packing. Takes an hour to pick the things you need for a week away from your own bed, stuff it all in a little box. Get to your hotel, boom! 5 minutes to unpack. My standard entropy viz to is our ever expanding universe. Imagine playing your Uno reverse card and getting all that stuff back in the big bang box

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Andrew Smith's avatar

Ever dive into any of the cyclical universe hypotheses? If nothing else, they are very fun to imagine. I think I wanna write about cyclical universes soonish.

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Andrew Sniderman 🕷️'s avatar

Please do, because I’ve never heard of it. I did hear that Google said the word ‘multiverse’ in their latest press release on Willow AI, so if related that puts Goatfury in Google class

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Andrew Smith's avatar

Well... I have googled an awful lot of things.

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Andrew Sniderman 🕷️'s avatar

There you go. Does Google know you? If I google Goatfury are you an international brand?

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Andrew Smith's avatar

Yeah, I've been around for a while now. There was a metal band in Brazil like 15 years ago w/the same name, but I haven't heard much about them lately.

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Andrew Sniderman 🕷️'s avatar

#1 in my exhaustive testing. That's how you disambiguate yourself from ten thousand Andrew Smiths!

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Woody's avatar

Occam's razor is fraught with danger against intelligent adversaries. In situations where someone is to be framed or made into a patsy, the razor causes the wrong conclusion. It's often also used to dismiss evidence: "All the facts are too complicated, let's just ignore stuff that doesn't fit our explanation since it's not the simplest".

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Andrew Smith's avatar

Very true. It's a helpful heuristic, but only under the right circumstances. It's just one tool in the box.

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Steven Aziz's avatar

Merry Christmas and this was a great article and read. Hope all is well.

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Andrew Smith's avatar

Thanks so much, Steve! Miss you, buddy. Hope your Christmas was awesome.

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Ken Barber's avatar

My first exposure to Occam's Razor - and to Sci-Fi author Theodore Sturgeon - was a short story of his named Occam's Scalpel. One of the best SciFi short stories I've ever read, and well worth the reader's time to look up and digest.

It is Occam's Razor that rules out most conspiracy theories. Also the Intelligent Design concept of life's origins.

As you said, a very useful tool for thinking.

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Andrew Smith's avatar

It's an incredibly helpful heuristic, and so powerful. I think I cut through like 80% of the noise with this rule.

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Daniel Nest's avatar

So you're not even going to give my theory of Earth and all of its inhabitants being a holographic projection invented by the CIA to distract Glorg spies from infiltrating the Milky Way and stealing the Hydrocore a chance, then?

Fine!

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Andrew Smith's avatar

Well, is this the simplest explanation? It doesn't have to be simple to be the simplest, IMO.

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Daniel Nest's avatar

I mean, if you think the whole “Giant random explosion in space billions of years ago and the resulting formation of planets with one somehow developing complex life out of single-celled organisms” mumbo jumbo is “the simplest explanation,” then it sounds like the CIA has gotten up you, man. You're a part of their system now.

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Andrew Smith's avatar

How do you know you're not part of the system too? Neo had no idea until he popped that pill. Now, I'm not suggesting taking a bunch of pills *per se*, mind you.

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Daniel Nest's avatar

Hmmmm...pills DO offer the simplest explanation though. I am confused now.

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Andrew Smith's avatar

Are you really confused, or is that just what the government wants you to think?

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Daniel Nest's avatar

Are you really the government or is it the thinking that gets you confused?!

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