I don’t recall now what it was that sent me to Google to look up a simple explanation/definition of Occam’s razor. All I’ve remembered for many years is that the simplest explanation for something is most likely the correct one.
I discovered almost immediately that Occam’s is more than that; it’s a “philosophical razor” and there are a number of them.
Per Wikipedia: “In philosophy, a razor is a principle or rule of thumb that allows one to eliminate (shave off) unlikely explanations for a phenomenon, or avoid unnecessary actions.
In addition to Occam’s, seven other razors were listed, but the one that caught my attention was Hanlon’s razor:
“Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.”
Well, so much for not thinking about Washington …
If thinking of Washington, think malice *and* stupidity.
I keep inserting “greed” in there somewhere.
I think that falls under the malice umbrella. You don’t get greed without screwing others.
Then there’s the more clinical “malignant narcissism.”
I agree entirely !!
👍
And i was thinking of Sweeney Todd!
Aha, so being up in the mountains is a good defense against the madness. I should have guessed.
johnthecook…and I was thinking of Biden and Haris, although I don’t think they know what “narcissism is!
They aren’t conceited, arrogant, or malicious enough have heard that diagnosis.
SO astute
Loved this one
(For some reason my comments aren’t getting through, but wanted to let you know I am reading…and keep filling out the silly WP form to “save” for future commenting)
Apparently WP decided your comment was worthy.
I hate that it’s gotten to the point where Washington is intruding on most everything I do.
Hanlon’s is my favourite !
Particularly apropos these days, isn’t it?
Couldn’t be à propos-er !!! [grin]
I was going to suggest Hanlon knows or knew Donald Trump. While looking for info on Hanlon, I noticed this, farther down the page on Hanlon’s razor on Wikipedia:
Grey’s law (a humorous variant of Arthur C. Clarke’s 3rd law):
Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.
It does seem to me, though, that in the current administration we have both things going on… incompetent people crowing about jars of liberal tears… Or, how about making “woke” a pejorative? The active firing of people with experience and competence in ways that are just downright damaging and traumatizing… Don’t even get me started on the current measles outbreak while launching a study into the link between measles and autism (and placing a incompetent, biased person with a questionable moral compass in charge) at the same time. I think that we need some new razors here…
I meant the link between the measles vaccine and autism, of course. This makes me upset for many, many reasons that probably are worth a whole post and I won’t bother you with it here. 🙂
RFK Jr has me bouncing off the walls. My dad was a doctor. I was mng editor of a medical journal. I’ve been around MDs all my life. What is WRONG with people!? When my son was in grade school, we had a little card showing all his vaccinations and without them he could not attend public school. I guess at some point that was determined to be a violation of somebody’s rights. I wrote somewhere once that the anti vaxxers were within their rights to refuse vaccination, but with the knowledge that they could not attend public schools and violate the rights of others to not be exposed to their possible disease. (Their rights end where mine begin.) I guess Texas doesn’t/didn’t feel the same.
In a world where infectious disease isn’t that big a problem, people have focused on the inherent risks in drugs and vaccines. The concept of public health is absolutely meaningless to them. There are so many layers to the problem it is hard to unpack.
I spent my life working in scientific research and then teaching biology to teenagers. Science originated as a philosophy… what do we know, and how do we know it? Anti-vaxxers (along with a lot of other groups) refuse to deal with demonstrable truths and instead invent “facts” to fit predetermined beliefs. They do it about vaccines, Covid, guns, the election, and on and on and on. It makes me crazy! It is all about whipping up chaos to hold power and control people.
So, that abject lack of leadership makes the whole concept of public health intolerable, where as a society we tolerate the low risk of bad outcomes for some individuals in order to secure lives of many, many more people, which is a good outcome for society. The phrase that my doctor uses is… the benefit outweighs the risks. People won’t take the risks, however, when they don’t see any benefits. That’s why there is so much bad information out there insisting that Covid wasn’t real, long Covid doesn’t exist, school shootings didn’t really happen, etc. It makes me crazy.
Me too. I can excuse ignorance, but not willful ignorance.