It just keeps getting weirder
(twitter.com)
You're viewing a single comment thread. View all comments, or full comment thread.
Comments (220)
sorted by:
Dude, I saw FARGO. Steve Buscemi's wound was gnarly enough for me!! He got shot in the face!!! He's taking the car.
And it is an assumption. The hidden assumption is that there would be any difference if the wound grazed his cheek.
I suggest that if the same events occurred and the wound barely grazed Trump's cheek, there would be absolutely nothing different about this board today. We would all still be just as concerned and upset.
To me cheek versus ear is a distinction without a difference.
Whoa.
This doesn't seem very Occam's Razor. Now you have to account for gunshot sounds timed perfectly with multiple different injuries spaced out a bit, and synced to video and the picture that captures the bullet in flight.
This introduces complexity. Your main issue is you are assuming intentionality in the location of the wound. You are assuming meaning in the location of the wound.
Which is why I think this is the wrong approach.
There's only a few end states that actually matter.
1 bullet completely misses 2 bullet is accurate. Trump is killed 3a Bullet it is not accurate, Trump severely injured. 3b. Bullet is not accurate, Trump with minor injury
That's how you look at something parsimoniously.
And you're right, I didn't look at the argument fully. Because it's not an Occam's razor analysis.
Occam's Razor is strictly a question of theory complexity. The problem here is, we are defining complexity differently. I am defining it as it is defined in formal analysis, in the information theoretic way. I am thinking about how to write computer programs to solve the problem of which is most complicated (similar to the travelling salesman problem). You seem to be defining it in the "how do I present this argument to my coffee shop buddy" sort of way.
If we define the basic terms differently, of course we can't have a meaningful conversation about it.
I couldn't disagree more. You are loosing too much information in your reduction. A loss of information will automatically make for a simpler model, but will also be counter to one of the requirements for the application of Occam's Razor, which is that ALL of the evidence must be considered. This elimination of information (or relevant evidence if you prefer) is, in my experience, very common in people's attempt to apply Occam's Razor, which is why it is so often misused/abused/misunderstood.
Occam's Razor doesn't in any way reject a theory before it has been analyzed. It can't be "not very Occam's Razor" until after all of the entire theories have been put into their "sets of assumptions" and then weighed.
You reject it because you think that:
Is something difficult. On the contrary, this type of stuff happens all the time in crisis actor situations. It is daily practice for agents provocateur.
In addition, all of the information you know about you received via video. Such things are faked all the time. Ever seen the movie Wag the Dog? Ya, that's not bullshit, that's the daily news. There are specific programs in the intelligence agencies whose job it is to do exactly these things. These things are trivial to make happen for these agencies.
That doesn't mean that's what happened, or even that I think it has, but your assumption that such things are extremely difficult (or somehow increase complexity) is a "hidden assumption" that I completely disagree with. On the contrary, I've seen too much evidence that make me think such things are trivially easy. There are too many examples of exactly those types of things happening. There are explicit statements of such programs existing by the FBI, CIA, corporations, etc.. They don't call them crisis actors because they suck at acting so bad it's a "crisis."
Setting up a ridiculously over complicated theory is simply not Occam's razor.
You don't need to go through all the turns of the theory to demonstrate it's not Occam's razor.
Also you critiqued my assessment of something broadcast live with a Hollywood movie
Think about those differences
Yup. It's leading you astray.
Occam's Razor has nothing to do with a theory, it has to do with deciding between theories; i.e. it is a process. A theory can't be "not Occam's Razor." The phrase doesn't even make any sense.
Let me try a different approach.
Let's try a hypothetical.
Let's suppose that you have specific knowledge of the media. You believe that the media is run by Big Brother, and you believe that the media creates fake news stories every day by employing crisis actors. In this hypothetical world these things aren't hidden from anyone, but are common knowledge. Not only do you know that such staged events happen daily, but everyone knows it. In such a scenario, saying "this was a staged event" would be "the least complex theory" purely through the context of other knowledge.
In this scenario, is this truly the "least complex theory," or does it just have numerous hidden assumptions based on the context of prior information? Like, we still would have to assume that the people involved were crisis actors. We would have to assume they weren't reacting organically, but according to a script. We would have to assume some nebulous hidden string puller wrote that script. But in the context of such staged acts on the news being "common knowledge" we wouldn't even recognize that as an assumption, because "everyone knows all the people on tv are crisis actors."
This is, in my experience, the most common application of "Occam's Razor" and it is a completely fallacious application. The hidden assumptions are everywhere, yet shoved under the rug of "common experience" without even realizing we are doing it. That is exactly how you seem to be approaching your "this is an overly complex theory" statement, and rightly so. You are recognizing all of the hidden assumptions because those assumptions aren't common knowledge and, likely, you disagree with them.
But what about someone who has spent years researching the media, and intelligence agencies, etc.? What about someone who has seen how often these events have occurred? For such a person, assuming they had found such events to be commonplace with legitimate and undeniable evidence, those hidden assumptions would creep in and influence their "least complex theory."
For those on the other side, where the belief is that these events are far more often organic than contrived, "common knowledge" would hide a completely different set of assumptions. In this scenario, a person would know about at least one time where an event on the news was staged (say, Jessie Smollett), but would assume that most of the news is organically derived. The assumptions there would be that the people involved aren't crisis actors, the people are acting organically, not reading from a script, and there is no hidden string puller writing such a script. They wouldn't even think of these things as assumptions, On the contrary, "everyone knows these things are true (except the crazy conspiracy theorists) and they don't even need to be considered as assumptions". Regardless of the truth of anyone's beliefs, both sides would be doing the same thing, but in the opposite way, thus coming to completely opposite conclusions on what the "most complex theory" is, because they have a completely different set of hidden assumptions and a completely different rug of "common knowledge" to sweep them under.
This is why "Occam's Razor" is a completely misunderstood and abused tool. I suggest it only applies rationally in the method I have employed it, from an information theoretic perspective, where one is trying to find the "least complicated theory" according to the strictures of that discipline. Any other application will be (and I believe always is) absolutely fraught with hidden assumptions that hide under the guise of "common knowledge."
This is also one reason Occam's Razor can never be used to determine the truth of a thing. That is completely outside of it's design parameters. I suggest it can only be used in decision making. Occam's Razor can be a useful computational tool, but I have yet to see it applied in any way that is not fallacious in common parlance.
I think we're agreeing Occam's Razor is not the operational principle going on here.