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And what of the deaths of nearly a dozen scientists? Is it really possible that they all just happened to die, most in such peculiar, jarring ways, within so short a time? ''We can never say for a fact that something isn't a conspiracy,'' says Bradley Efron, a professor of statistics at Stanford. ''We can just point out the odds that it isn't.''

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And is it a coincidence that the NY Times would refer to the Globe & Mail as "Toronto's"?

[ August 12, 2002: Message edited by: clockwork ]

Why is the sky blue?
"God wills it."

Why does water freeze?
"God wills it."

It can be a completely coherent explanation for everything in the world too. What about contradictions? "God wills contradictions."

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Because Occam's razor is sometimes called the principle of simplicity some simpleminded creationists have argued that Occam's razor can be used to support creationism over evolution. After all, having God create everything is much simpler than evolution, which is a very complex mechanism. But Occam's razor does not say that the more simpleminded a hypothesis, the better. If it did, Occam's would be dull razor for a dim populace indeed.

(from the above link, which is quite a good discussion.)

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The fact of the matter is, is that what we personally believe doesn't matter to whatever is the truth. If there is really a God out there pushing us around like chess pieces; or if the Universe is entirely a mathematical construction where all numbers need to add up to 11; or if the mysterious forces of the Tao pull us together and push us apart depending on how we flow with everything else, our personal beliefs have no effect. This goes for Occam's Razor too.

Just because something is a good sounding theory doesn't make it right. The horizon still looks flat to me, even if the world is round.

I only quibble that:

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or if the Universe is entirely a mathematical construction where all numbers need to add up to 11;

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Perfect. Doesn't fail Occam's Razor at all

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A cluster of similar events happening isn't unusual; in fact in statistics it is to be expected and it is called the poison distribution, if memory serves

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Of course, I use the less fancy-schmancy name for it. Cluster fuck.

Edited: for hideous spelling

[ August 13, 2002: Message edited by: Rebecca West ]

That is why I love philosophy.

All that I'm saying is that it is handy reference. From the link above by Rici lake:

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Occam's razor is also called the principle of parsimony. These days it is usually interpreted to mean something like "the simpler the explanation, the better" or "don't multiply hypotheses unnecessarily." In any case, Occam's razor is a principle which is frequently used outside of ontology, e.g., by philosophers of science in an effort to establish criteria for choosing from among theories with equal explanatory power. When giving explanatory reasons for something, don't posit more than is necessary. Von Däniken could be right: maybe extraterrestrials did teach ancient people art and engineering, but we don't need to posit alien visitations in order to explain the feats of ancient people. Why posit pluralities unnecessarily? Or, as most would put it today, don't make any more assumptions than you have to. We can posit the ether to explain action at a distance, but we don't need ether to explain it, so why assume an ethereal ether?

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Occam's razor isn't always appropriate. Sometimes there is so little data, fact or evidence at our disposal that it's quite useless.