Ask Lemmy
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either [email protected] or [email protected].
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email [email protected]. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
view the rest of the comments
Occam's razor, because it seem it is often used wrong by using it for just shutting down possible explanations. Typically noone mentions, that this is about guessing probabilities without prior knowledge and not a way to completely ignore an explanation.
Yes, it's a way to move forward with incomplete knowledge, when you need to make assumptions regardless of which theory you go with. There will always be an asterisk by theories or decisions made with this method, because one of more of the assumptions themselves could later turn out to be incorrect, thereby invalidating your decision. Occams razor is very misunderstood and used or quoted incorrectly all the time.
People just use it as "this makes sense to me, therefore it's probably right"
In fictional media I've mostly seen this the other way round. Like "I don't want to believe this expanation, so it should not be considered "