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Occam’s Razor
Philosophers have been talking about Occam’s Razor for, oh, close to a thousand years. Occam’s Razor says eliminate all this superfluous material in your theory and you’ll have a better theory. It’s the counsel of stinginess, of not putting, trying to put too much into a theory. Don’t multiply entities beyond necessity. Have a thrifty ontology, as few things in your theory as can explain the results. No superfluous junk added into the theory.
Occam’s Broom
Occam’s Broom was, a nice intuition pump invented by Sydney Brenner. And Occam’s Broom is what you use to sweep inconvenient facts under the rug. Conspiracy theories. They’re often presented with tremendous plausibility by the adherents of those theories who really believe them. And they’ve got lots of things that fit nicely into a very persuasive explanation. What the uninitiated audience can’t do is know what’s been swept under the rug, what they are not accounting for. And you can’t know that unless you know the field.
I’m often asked, “Well, why don’t you believe such and such a conspiracy theory like the conspiracy theory that the World Trade Center was packed with explosives that caused the actual downfall of the towers?” And I say, “Look, I’m not a civil engineer. I’m not an expert in these matters. I’m sure you can put together a very persuasive account that looks like it might be true, but I don’t know what’s missing.”
Of course, there are real conspiracies, but very often conspiracy theories depend for their credibility on what’s been swept under the rug. I think the best advice to give to the nonexpert when confronted with a dubious theory is a little modesty. Recognize that you’re not an expert and recognize that since you’re not an expert, there are all sorts of things that might be very obvious to an expert that you just would never imagine. And that those are the crushing objections to the theory that’s being presented to you. I often annoy and frustrate people who try to get me to join up on some wild theory when I say, “Look, I suppose you might be right, but don’t count on me to endorse it because I don’t have the expertise to know what’s been hidden, what’s been swept under the rug by Occam’s Broom.”