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RAZING_CONSPIRACY
March 16, 2008
May 15, 2008
Occam's Razor and Conspiracy
A bank is robbed. Half of the witnesses
say there were three robbers, half say
there were only two.
Which group of witnesses would you assume is correct?
Isn't it simpler to say that there were only two robbers?
Occam's Razor dictates that
"entities should not be
multiplied beyond necessity":
Does that cut out the third man?
A detective on the case is impressed by the
efficient, direct movements of the bank robbers,
and concludes they spent a fair amount of time
"casing the joint", and manged to do so cleverly
without being detected... unless, perhaps, one
of the bank tellers was in on it?
Is that a simpler theory? But this presumes one
*more* person was involved.
Suppose that one of the witnesses is an odd
character that insists there were no actual bank
robbers present-- it was all an illusion
created by a telepathic martian who emptied the
vault directly by teleportation.
Isn't that the simplest explanation? It involves
just a single entity, rather than three or four.
I think that The Razor must be applied to types of
entities-- once you've established the existance of
bank robbers and gangs of bank robbers, there's little
difference between supposing there were 2 or 3 present.
One or those two stories (2 or 3 robbers)
is likely to be correct, but Occam's Razor
alone isn't going to guide you to which And of course, all of the
story is the right one. witnesses may be off,
because they missed the
extra guy out back who was
clubbing a guard on a
cigarette break.
Our information is
always incomplete,
but you're not
allowed to make
assumptions about
Occam's Razor applies quite well the way in which
to the telepathic martian theory-- it's incomplete.
we have no experience with these
telepathic martians, and adding
them into our worldview would
definitely be "multiplying
entities unnecessarily".
No doubt it could be argued that our
lack of knowledge of these martians
just shows what good telepaths they
are, but the same thing could be said
for any number of ghostly presences
or clever aliens. Why martians? Why
telepathic ones? Why not faerie gold The world is a complex place,
capriciously evaporating while a and proper understanding of it
group of performance artists no doubt must be complex, but
pretended to be robbing the bank? introducing complexities
beyond what can be established
by the evidence should be
avoided-- those are the warts
of reasoning the Razor is
intended to slice away.
On the other hand, a "conspiracy
theory" involving a corrupt
bankteller is not at all a violation
of Occam's Razor. Historically,
corrupt banktellers (and corrupt
employees in general) are not
unheard of. Whether a bankteller
happened to be involved in this
crime would need to be established,
of course, but ruling it out simply
because you like gangs of 3 better
than gangs of 4 would be ridiculous.
But then, pushing the example further:
What if someone proposed a theory that
required a conspiracy of all six bank
tellers on duty that day. While this
is not an impossibility, typically one I think the conspiracy of
would say it "strains credulity", or multiple-employees would have
it "is very implausible"... to be regarded as an additional
entity all of it's own.
Plausibility arguments are a
favorite method of attack on
"conspiracy theories".
What is the relationship between
"plausibility" and The Razor?
The Razor is a call for
parsimony, for simplicity-- For example, explanations in terms
and it's application is often of "God's will" might seem to be
deceptively difficult. the simplest of all-- an infinite
number of potential causes are
replaced by one.
But "God's will" doesn't really
count as an explanation:
The single "entity" involved is
fundamentally unknowable.
Everything is "explainable" with
this, but only after the fact,
nothing is ever predictable.
In the case of "conspiracy theory", I think
you'd have to say that when the supposed
conspiracy grows without bound into "The
Conspiracy", it becomes an additional
entity, strikingly similar to God, as far
as explanatory power goes:
Anything-- after the fact-- might be
part of The Conspiracy, but in advance,
no one knows what The Conspiracy will
do next.
The boundary between conspiracy and
The Conspiracy is fuzzy, of course:
at some point, as you add actors to
the scenario it becomes difficult to
imagine the organization of them all:
how do they communicate, how do they
get their instructions, what is the
incentive structure that motivates
them all, and keeps defectors in line?
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