Re: History-less observer moments

From: Brent Meeker <meekerdb.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Thu, 18 May 2000 17:07:33 -0700

> It seems to me that a good way of selecting one idea over is competition is
> Occam's razor

I've seen this and variatiants thereof several times on this list. Occam's razor is
all very well when you have two theories which equally save the phenomena; but
in physics it is generally extremely difficult to find even one theory which
agrees with all that is known experimentally. In other fields, philosophy and
psychology, it seems that there are multiple theories which apply to the same
observed phenomena, but the phenomena are so complex and incompletely known and the
 theories so imprecise that it is impossible to really know that the theories are consistent with all the phenomena (this seems to be the state of the multi-verse hypothesis) and which theory is really 'simpler'; consequently Occam's razor is not so useful.

Brent Meeker
Received on Sat May 20 2000 - 14:52:31 PDT