Occam's Razor (pre-emptive thread split)

[Cain]

Yeah.  But it will be.  And when it is, the social scientists will be there to say they discovered their GUT first and neeer neer ne neer neeer.

[Kai]

Master Kai, I'm glad you entered in to this.

Beyond Occam, RB noticed a behavior for humans to ignore nuance in favor (and often counter to reality) of false simplicity.

Though you don't necessarily subscribe to meme theory, does this sound like a conditioned behavior, or does it seem to be a deeper impulse?

By our methods of communication, much of the groundwork for it genetically inherited, an explanation such as "The woman down the street is a witch, she did it" is much easier to calculate in our style of communication than an explanation that requires mathematics, physics, etc. It's not so much that a seemingly simple answer such as my example is actually simpler at all, it's just /easier/ for humans to grasp. It's probably instinctual, at least in great part. The ability to see through it, I think, would be conditioned.

[LMNO]

So, we have two words: "Simple" and "Easy".

I'd like to use them in the following way...

Something is "simple" when it has the least number of conjectures, suppositions, unproved assertions and wild guesses.
Something is "easy" when a 10-yer-old can comprehend it.

THEREFORE:

The simplest answer is not always the easiest.

[Kai]

So, we have two words: "Simple" and "Easy".

I'd like to use them in the following way...

Something is "simple" when it has the least number of conjectures, suppositions, unproved assertions and wild guesses.
Something is "easy" when a 10-yer-old can comprehend it.

THEREFORE:

The simplest answer is not always the easiest.

That's correct. In fact, the simplest answer is seldom the easiest in science. Otherwise the scientific Renaissance would have happened in ancient Greece.

[LMNO]

So, per RB, there seems to be a self-recursion going on.  The brain wants it to be easy, doesn't care if it's simple.  So when a brain develops theories about itself (which is what a lot of the softer sciences are doing), it naturally slips into easy, and then biases itself into confirming the easy theory.

In physics, when you choose the easy instead of the simple, you tend to get the wrong answer more often than not.  In psychology, not so much, due to the mind's endless obsession with confirmation.

I don't know for sure because I haven't checked, but there must be a kind of science that analyzes the brains of other mammals.  And I would hazard a guess that their studies and conclusions lean further away from the easy.

[Cain]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethology

[Kai]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethology

Also, evolutionary and comparative psychology. Though much of the conclusions are bunk due to poor scientific practices and the sort of projection LMNO is talking about.

[Cain]

Yeah, my first thought was, initially, evolutionary psychology, but I know there is a lot of controversy and dispute around that (I don't know the exact nature of it, because I haven't looked thoroughly, but I know it exists.  Evolutionary psychology as a concept seems fine, sensible even, but I can easily see how it could turn horrible very quickly, especially by those who want to imply is=ought and with particular political agendas).  Ethology seems on fairly secure ground though.