Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

NaimKabir OP t1_j39bvfc wrote

Reply to comment by XiphosAletheria in Occam’s Deepest Cut: Occam's Razor isn't a guide towards the truth—it *defines* the truth by NaimKabir

My point is that we could have made an overly complex theory that perfectly models our solar system geocentrically. In the extreme case, imagine we used a neural net fed with geocentric images—this model could have millions of parameters and perform predictions perfectly. However we wouldn't call this model true because it's not simple. The truth is always at the edge of what is unfalsified and what is simplest, by convention

−2

XiphosAletheria t1_j39czux wrote

I mean, we would have used the simpler model because it would be more useful, but if in the fullness of time space telescopes had allowed us to see that the geocentric model was correct, we would have still called it true. That is, you have cherry picked an example where Occam's Razor correctly pointed us to the truth, but that doesn't prove much.

5

NaimKabir OP t1_j39r4ea wrote

The article proves the use of Occam's Razor for truth in the general case: when picking between unfalsified models where one has a subset of the other's parameters. It's a short set theoretic argument

−2