How Occam's Razor Works

Summary

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Stuff You Should Know

Episode Summary: How Occam’s Razor Works

Hosts: Josh Clark & Chuck Bryant
Date: June 19, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Josh and Chuck go deep on Occam’s Razor—a deceptively simple philosophical principle often misunderstood, misused, and invoked everywhere from science to true crime forums and even religious debates. They trace its history from medieval philosophy to modern science, examining what it really means, how it’s been used (and misused), and why it resonates so strongly even today. Through lively banter, historical anecdotes, and real-world examples, they highlight Occam’s Razor’s nuance, limitations, and enduring appeal.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. What is Occam’s Razor?

• Occam’s Razor is the heuristic that, when faced with competing hypotheses, one should prefer the simplest explanation that requires the fewest assumptions. (05:18)
• Commonly phrased as: "Given two possible outcomes, the simplest version is probably the right one." (05:18, Josh Clark)

Notable Quotes:

• Josh Clark [05:18]: "The basis of science ... is Occam's Razor. And if Occam's Razor sounds familiar, but you can't quite place it, you've probably heard it as something like given two possible outcomes or explanations or whatever. The simplest version is probably the right one."
• Chuck Bryant [05:50]: "Even that, in its simplicity, is beautiful. The mere statement itself is an example of its simplicity and how wonderful it can be."

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2. Principle Origins: Plurality & Parsimony

• Two core formulations, both often attributed to William of Ockham:
  • Plurality Should Not Be Posited Without Necessity: Don’t add complexity unless it’s needed.
  • Principle of Parsimony: It is pointless to do with more what can be done with less. (07:48–08:16, Josh)
• Although nuanced, they’re generally considered the same in modern philosophy references.

Notable Quotes:

• Josh Clark [07:56]: "'Plurality should not be posited without necessity.' And the other is the principle of parsimony, which is it is pointless to do with more what is done with less."

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3. Historical Roots and Key Figures

• William of Ockham ("Billy Occam"):
  • English Franciscan monk (1285–1349), known for rationalist, independent thought and challenging the church's orthodoxy.
  • Lived a humble life, took his vow of poverty seriously, and demanded similar humility from the church—eventually leading to excommunication. (15:03–16:33)
• Was not first to articulate the principle:
  • Aristotle: Linked simplicity to perfection: "The more perfect a nature is, the fewer means it requires for its operation." (17:00)
  • Robert Grosseteste: Emphasized explanations with fewer premises. (17:17–18:09)
  • John Duns Scotus: Modern scholarship attributes the key formulations more to him than Ockham. (18:33–19:19)

Notable Quotes:

• Josh Clark [16:33]: "He was the real deal as far as, like, a true believer went. The weird thing about William of Ockham was that he was also a genuinely independent thinker and a rationalist, which at the time, rationalism and the Church did not go hand in hand."
• Chuck Bryant [18:09]: "Boy, the ironies there are rich."

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4. Medieval Synthesis vs. Rationalism

• Church View (Medieval Synthesis, Thomas Aquinas): All knowledge comes from God; ultimately, every effect traces back to divine cause.
• Ockham’s Radical Rationalism: Knowledge arises from human cognition, not necessarily from God. Rationalism and empiricism stand apart from faith.
• Ockham: You can’t know God through your senses—faith and rational thought are separate domains. (20:34–23:14)

Notable Quotes:

• Josh Clark [22:51]: "He was a stand up, rational thinker... also one of the more devout human beings walking the earth at the time and was a monk for basically his whole life."
• Chuck Bryant [23:18]: "So he was just a conundrum."

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5. Occam’s Razor in Science: Lorentz vs. Einstein

• Lorentz and Einstein both concluded mathematically that moving closer to the speed of light slows time.
  • Lorentz: Explained via the "ether"—an unobservable medium.
  • Einstein: Did not add unobservable entities, fitting Occam’s Razor.
• Einstein’s simpler, empirically-rooted version became dominant.
• Irony: Later, Einstein disproved overly strict empiricism by helping prove the existence of molecules—showing that not everything observable is all that exists. (24:56–26:36)

Notable Quotes:

• Josh Clark [25:01]: "Lawrence violated that principle of plurality. Right. He added something to this that required an additional... leap of faith."
• Josh Clark [26:33]: "Ernst Mach... basically said, like, molecules don't exist... we can't see them. They don't exist."

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6. Who Uses Occam’s Razor (and How)?

• Scientists: Use for constructing models, designing neural networks, data interpretation—favoring simpler solutions not because they must be correct, but for practical performance and reliability. (33:29)
• Skeptics: Should use it as a tool for considering explanations, not to disprove ideas they dislike.
  • True skepticism means remaining open to evidence; Occam’s Razor is not a weapon.
  • The "simplest" explanation is subjective—what’s simple for one person may not be for another.
• Debates & Belief Systems:
  • Both creationists and atheists have attempted to invoke Occam’s Razor to prove/disprove God, highlighting the subjectivity and potential misuse of the principle. (35:10–36:53)

Notable Quotes:

• Chuck Bryant [32:32]: "That's a true skeptic... later on, the more fantastical explanation could be true and has been true."
• Josh Clark [34:33]: "... you're making a subjective judgment about what's simpler, not what's right."

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7. Limits, Subjectivity, and Misuse

• The “simplest” explanation is not automatically the “right” one.
• Occam’s Razor can be used to support opposing arguments—often not helpful in complex or ambiguous domains (e.g., distinguishing purposes of photosynthesis or debating God’s existence). (37:11–40:31)
• Complexity doesn’t necessarily falsify an explanation; sometimes, complexity is essential (e.g., Ptolemy’s model of the cosmos).
• Simplicity as perfection is a human construct—just because people value it doesn’t mean the universe operates by it.

Notable Quotes:

• Josh Clark [38:54]: "Simplicity is human made... It is possible. The universe is complicated. You can come up with all sorts of examples..."
• Chuck Bryant [39:19]: "Let's say in terms of engineering, it's probably a decent model to think, hey, the more complex this system is... the more things there are to break. So we should probably try and make it as simple as possible."
• Josh Clark [40:12]: "It doesn't mean it's right... one's not right over the other."

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Notable Quotes & Fun Moments

• Chuck Bryant [03:38]: "I've had that dream about once a week for about 35 years." (on Play-Doh mustache nightmares)
• Josh Clark [25:01]: "He goes, I don't know what's what, but I know it ain't got nothing to do with no ether." (on Einstein’s attitude)
• Josh Clark [41:58]: "So the next time somebody starts flailing some Occam's Razor stuff at you, you tell them, Josh, I'm gonna thump you. Do you want to be thumped?"

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [05:00–11:35] – Defining Occam’s Razor and its original intention
• [15:00–20:18] – William of Ockham’s life and clashes with the church
• [24:56–26:36] – Lorentz vs. Einstein: Case study in scientific application
• [30:06–34:33] – Who uses Occam’s Razor; subjective simplicity and skepticism
• [35:10–37:56] – Theological debates and the razor's subjectivity/misuse
• [38:54–40:31] – Human valuation of simplicity and its limits in nature & art

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Takeaways

• Occam’s Razor is not proof—it’s a guideline: It helps prioritize simpler explanations, but doesn’t declare them true or more probable by necessity.
• Subjectivity is inescapable: Assessing “simplicity” always involves human judgment, which varies across individuals and contexts.
• Misuse abounds: Using Occam’s Razor to “disprove” is an error; it’s for weighing, not dismissing, possibilities.
• Application is broad—but not universal: It works as a pragmatic rule-of-thumb in science and engineering, less so in art, theology, or debates where standards of “simplicity” diverge.
• Occam’s legacy: A blend of faith and radical rationalism—reflecting the nuance that defines the principle he popularized.

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Listen If...

You’re curious how a medieval monk’s philosophy shapes science (and arguments on the internet!) today, or want a nuanced, entertaining take on how we seek simple answers in a complex world.

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Transcript

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[Josh Clark]

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[Josh Clark]

It's Josh coming back at you hot with our 2018 joint on Occam's Razor. One of the more semi understood scientific principles, but it's also probably the most widely used of them all too. Or misused, I guess I should say. We have a medieval monk who became one of the early proto scientists of to thank for Occam's Razor, which makes him a hero to science. And here's our episode on that hero welcome to Stuff youf should know from howstuffworks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's guest producer Tristan over there. So it's stuff you should know.

[Chuck Bryant]

I don't know how these are going to release, but as you notice, Tristan weirdly grew out his mustache in the last hour.

[Kalpen (Podcast Host)]

Again.

[Josh Clark]

He's quick.

[Chuck Bryant]

He is very fast.

[Josh Clark]

He can make it go in and out, in and out.

[Chuck Bryant]

What is that?

[Josh Clark]

It's in, like, he's growing his mustache and it's sucking it back in.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, okay.

[Josh Clark]

Sucking it back in. You know, like, Reverse Play doh.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right?

[Josh Clark]

Do you remember that Play DOH set with the.

[Chuck Bryant]

Like, the little meat grinder?

[Advertisement Voice]

No.

[Josh Clark]

There was one where you could grow a mustache on a dude, if I remember correctly.

[Chuck Bryant]

I think I remember that.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, but imagine if you could reverse it, too.

[Chuck Bryant]

It was called the Play DOH Nightmare Set.

[Josh Clark]

Is that your nightmare? Growing a Play DOH mustache, waking up like that?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I've had that dream about once a week for about 35 years.

[Josh Clark]

Like, all the rest of you is Chuck, but just your mustache is Wallace and Gromit.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, dude. Yesterday there was a bad smell. Emily and I were having a glass of wine at a wine bar. There was a bad smell nearby. I think it was a dumpster or something. And they were growing fresh herbs at this wine bar, and I rubbed a rosemary bush and then swiped it all over my mustache. And Emily's mind was blown. She was just like, oh, my God. Like, I can't believe. Like, that's an actual use for facial hair.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I guess it is.

[Chuck Bryant]

To hold in that smell. I was like, well, you can wipe it on your upper lip. It's probably the same thing.

[Josh Clark]

Sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

Maybe the hair retains more

[Josh Clark]

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[Chuck Bryant]

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[Josh Clark]

Which essential oils? Man, people are clamoring for that episode.

[Chuck Bryant]

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[Josh Clark]

We will eventually.

[Chuck Bryant]

It's been a big part of my life for 10 or 12 years now.

[Josh Clark]

Essential oils. We'll talk about it someday. But not today.

[Chuck Bryant]

No, no, because Chuck's gonna stumble through a philosophy podcast.

[Josh Clark]

It's a. Yeah, I guess it is philosophy. It's the philosophy of knowledge. Epistemology is another way to put it. But specifically, Chuck, we're talking today about a little ditty you may have heard of before called Occam's Razor.

[Chuck Bryant]

Called the Gambler.

[Josh Clark]

Have you. Have you ever. You'd heard of Occam's Razor before, right?

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, so much so that I thought for sure we had covered this But I realized that we just talked about it quite a bit in the Scientific Method episode.

[Josh Clark]

I'm not at all surprised, because a lot of people say that the basis of science, which is how humans approach nature in our universe and us and everything scientifically, the basis of that is Occam's Razor. And if Occam's Razor sounds familiar, but you can't quite place it, you've probably heard it as something like given two possible outcomes or explanations or whatever. The simplest version is probably the right one.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. It's a pretty. Even that, in its simplicity, is beautiful. The mere statement itself is an example of its simplicity and how wonderful it can be. Just to think like. Yeah, you know what? Let's cut through all the gobbledygook. I think the easiest way to explain this, whether it's. What do you call the orb in a photo?

[Josh Clark]

An orb.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. It's not your great grandfather coming to visit you on a different plane. It's really just an error with your photograph.

[Josh Clark]

It's the flash reflecting off water vapor in the air.

[Chuck Bryant]

Or Kennedy probably acted alone.

[Josh Clark]

Kennedy, he shot himself from afar.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. I clearly meant to say Oswald acted alone, because that is the simplest explanation, not this very convoluted deep plot that goes that 100 people were involved in to assassinate Kennedy.

[Josh Clark]

So we'll talk about all that, because what you're doing right now has become pretty standard. You're using Occam's razor to disprove other people's points.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

This is a total and complete misuse of Occam's Razor. It's not the original intention. The original intention had nothing to do with saying that's wrong. It is just to a heuristic device, a guide, a rule of thumb that tells you that because things tend to be more simple in the universe,

[Camper/Parent Narrator]

if

[Josh Clark]

you're doing something, don't make it harder than it has to be. Don't add more to it than is needed to get the job done.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

And there's actually a couple ways to put this. And both of them get attributed to William of Ockham, who we'll talk about in a second.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, Billy Occam.

[Josh Clark]

But one is called. He sounds like a baseball manager. Yeah, but one is called the principle of plurality.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Harder to say fast than you would think it is. And that is translated from the Latin. Plurality should not be posited without necessity. And the other is the principle of parsimony, which is it is pointless to do with more what is done with less. From what I understand, they Are one and the same.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, really?

[Josh Clark]

I could not find anyone who could explain the difference. And I see them interchangeably, not just like on some dude's blog, but on, like, you know, the Internet Encyclopedia Philosophy or the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Like, they don't seem to be different.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, parsimony, it seems different to me because that specifically is like, not using resources, not spending money if you don't have to. And that seems different than plurality.

[Josh Clark]

Okay, well, then let's explore it. So plurality adding to something, doubling something, maybe just making it more than just the singular. He's saying plurality should not be positive without necessity. Right. So I guess what he's saying then, if they are different, then if you're guessing at something, if you're trying to explain something, don't make it harder than it is. Don't make it bigger than is absolutely necessary to explain it.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, that makes sense.

[Josh Clark]

Or, and this is a really big point that we'll see in a minute, William of Ockham really was saying, don't add on to something beyond what you know to be true and correct. Which a lot of people over time, and I think he actually maybe explicitly was an empiricist, have said. William of Ockham was an empiricist. He was saying. Saying that you need to experience things through your senses to know that they are true.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yes. Empirical evidence. If I can look at it or smell it or taste it or feel it. What's the fifth one?

[Josh Clark]

Tickle it, tickle it.

[Chuck Bryant]

And then the sixth one, of course we know, means Bruce Willis is really dead.

[Josh Clark]

See the ghost of it.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. If there is no empirical evidence, if you cannot experience it with one of your senses, then it's pooh, poohed.

[Josh Clark]

So it is. And those two things, like you really, especially modern science, especially science these days, you put them together, it's given two things go with the simpler explanation. And you don't believe anything that you can't sense one way or another through your senses empirically. Right. You put those together, you have the basis for modern science. And so the idea that. That things that are simpler are better, or the idea that the universe is simpler, like, when you start to think about it, it's all over the place.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

Like the idea that the universe is based on simpler being better is found everywhere. Right. So, like, there's things. Things have fewer parts, things that require less energy. The encapsulation of larger ideas into smaller amounts of words or theories or whatever. These things are very much prized by humanity. So it just kind of makes sense that Occam's Razor is a sensible thing and that you could actually use it to uncover the mysteries of the universe. But again, that's not really necessarily the case, to tell you the truth.

[Chuck Bryant]

No, I mean, there's gonna be a lot of. And this stuff is kind of fun. Just a lot of back and forth on Occam's Razor throughout this whole thing because there is no. It's. And that's kind of part of the whole jam of Occam's Razor is there is no right or wrong here.

[Advertisement Voice]

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[Chuck Bryant]

You know what's weird is not right.

[Josh Clark]

A lot of people point to it, though, that it's, oh, this is right. I just proved you wrong. Occam's Razor. And that's just not true.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, man. All right, should we take a break early?

[Josh Clark]

Okay.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I think we should take a break now because I need to get my head wrapped around this and we'll come back, get in the wayback machine and visit Billy Occam.

[Josh Clark]

Okay.

[Parent Narrator]

With my mom and dad living in Orange county, when we bring my five and seven year old to visit, we are sometimes in for a two hour drive that could feel like 10.

[Camper/Parent Narrator]

Oh, as an avid camper, I know all about this. We'll pack up the RV and know this is either going to be the trip of a lifetime or a complete disaster.

[Parent Narrator]

Which is why we load up the iPads with Lingokids before we even pull out of the driveway.

[Camper/Parent Narrator]

It's what dreams are made of. Lingokids keeps kids engaged and quiet with over 4000 interactive games, songs, and shows that kids simply cannot get enough of.

[Parent Narrator]

You can pack whatever you think you'll need, but Lingokids is the only entertainment you'll need for a stress free car ride.

[Camper/Parent Narrator]

Or really any ride. Plane, train, hovercraft, whatever.

[Parent Narrator]

Download Lingokids for free today or unlock

[Camper/Parent Narrator]

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[Parent Narrator]

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[Josh Clark]

So now Billy Occam sounds like a 1980s recording star. Oh, sure, like Billy Ocean.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Get off of My Razor and Get Into My Car was this big hit.

[Josh Clark]

So we should say the razor, too. It's a philosophical term. It's a term of philosophy, the razor you use to scrape away unnecessary stuff. So it's Occam's razor. So let's go back and meet Billy Occam, shall we? Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

And you wrote this, by the way, back in your article writing days. And you point out very astutely that this is from a time in our history of the world where you might not have had a surname. You may have been William of Ockham, which is the case here, which is in England. And he lived between about 1285 and 1349. And he was a philosophical dude and a Franciscan monk. And he very much, like you point out, took his vow of poverty very seriously and lived a very meager, humble life.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, he did. He also expected the Church to take the same vow of poverty. And he actually butted heads with the church quite a bit. So much so that he ended up getting excommunicated, as we'll see. But he was the real deal as far as, like a true believer went. The weird thing about William of Ockham was that he was also a genuinely independent thinker and a rationalist, which at the time, rationalism and the Church did not go hand in hand. There was really not much rationalism. So for an idea, the idea for this upstart Franciscan monk to start questioning the ideas of the Church, and not only that, but how the. The leaders of the Church conducted themselves and how much money they surrounded Themselves with and how much power they had politically. This is. It was a big deal, right?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And he is not. He did not invent this line of thought as much as he's probably attributed to this. To people that just know him from, like a Jeopardy. Board. He. This is already a line of thought well established by this time in the medieval times. And he was just. He kind of boiled it down to those two sentences that you were talking about so anyone could understand it, and he could put it on a bumper sticker and a T shirt and sell it.

[Josh Clark]

Right. So it was Aristotle who was the guy who came up with this idea first that simplicity equals perfection and perfection equals simplicity. He said, the more perfect a nature is, the fewer means it requires for its operation. Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

I love that.

[Josh Clark]

So that makes sense.

[Chuck Bryant]

That speaks to me.

[Josh Clark]

But then over time, in between Aristotle and William, it kind of got expanded. So let me give you an example of that same thought from Robert Grosset, who was an early scientist, also a theologian, I believe, too. Here is his version of it. That is better and more valuable, which requires fewer other circumstances being equal. For if one thing were demonstrated from many and another thing from fewer equally known premises, clearly that is better, which is from fewer, because it makes us know quickly. Just as a universal demonstration is better than particular because it produces knowledge from fewer premises, Is that the end? Similarly, in natural science, in moral science, and in metaphysics, the best is that which needs no premises and that better, that which needs the fewer other circumstances being equal.

[Chuck Bryant]

Boy, the ironies there are rich.

[Josh Clark]

Right? So within less than a hundred years, William of Ockham comes along and he's just like, plurality should not be positive without necessity. Robert.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And Robert was like, well, yeah, I guess that's one way you could say it.

[Josh Clark]

So I want to say something, though, before we keep going, Chuck. I actually found a correction of my own article that I missed before.

[Chuck Bryant]

What's that?

[Josh Clark]

It turns out that they think now that another theologian scientist from William of Ockham's era named John Dunn Scottis was the one who really encapsulated this principle of plurality and principle of parsimony. And that it was a guy from the 19th century, William Rowan Hamilton, a British mathematician, that he was the one who misattributed it to William of Ockham.

[Chuck Bryant]

So is William of Ockham just a know nothing?

[Josh Clark]

No, no. His writings definitely included this stuff. And he never took credit for this. But they think that it was actually John's Duns Scotus who encapsulated it. The way that we tend to think of it now.

[Chuck Bryant]

So he sold all the bumper stickers.

[Josh Clark]

Right. But William of Ockham thought this way, and he was a radical thinker and a rationalist, as we'll see.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right. And like you kind of teased out earlier, he did butt heads with the Church over this. He wrote a lot about it, and the Church was not into it. And Pope John the. What is that, 22nd. They kind of squared off on this. And of course, the Pope wins all battles, at least back then. And he was excommunicated, and several of his monk brothers. And I take that to mean not real brothers. Right, right. Were excommunicated. In 1328, he went to Munich seeking refuge. He was protected there by Emperor Louis iv. And ultimately he won out because he started writing papers about Pope John XXII saying he's a heretic and people ultimately believed him.

[Josh Clark]

Right. He definitely made some pretty convincing points. And he also, again, like, if you're saying, I took a vow of poverty, the Church really should, too, and the Church isn't poverty stricken, and you are. That gives you a little more credibility from the outset as well.

[Chuck Bryant]

Sure.

[Josh Clark]

So there's some reasons why William of Ockham is this theologian, a devout Franciscan monk, is looked upon as one of the fathers of Western science, Like the foundation of Western science. Right. Or science in general. And the reason why is he argued against the prevailing ideas at the time, which is called medieval synthesis. And this is very much championed by Thomas Aquinas, who's a famous theologian. I believe he was a saint. And one of the reasons he was canonized was because of this thinking about this. But the whole medieval synthesis thing was that God was first and foremost everything. Right. You were a member of the Church just as much as you were a member of your country, a citizen of your country. All human knowledge came from God and Thomas Aquinas. It wasn't just like the end. Thomas Aquinas used philosophy to prove that sentiment that all human knowledge came from God. And here is how. And basically, it took the idea of cause and effect and said that you can trace every effect back to a cause, back to another effect, back to another cause, but ultimately, you were going to end up on God, and that all of our conceptions of everything arose from God's conception, and that God willed that we understand things this way, which means that this is the perfect way to understand it, which means it's right. Right. So that is not what William Wachum thought. He was, again, a rationalist who said, no, we tend to think things are things, because that is that arises in the human mind from cognition, not from God. And this dude was not a heretic. He believed that you didn't apply rationalism to God, that God required faith, and rationalism stood on its own. It was a different thing. And you couldn't know God through your senses. God was elsewhere. Leave God out of this. And the fact that he was able to really successfully lay like a philosophical groundwork for this, a rational groundwork for it. It's one thing today to be like, I'm a secular human, you know, I'm rational. Forget the church that's today. This is at a time when this guy is saying this and the church has the power to burn you at the stake. Like, he was a stand up, rational thinker, Right. Which kind of makes him a hero of rationality today. And this is another perfect example of how Occam's Razor gets confused. Occam himself gets confused too. He's a hero of science. But he was also one of the more devout human beings walking the earth at the time and was a monk for basically his whole life.

[Chuck Bryant]

And also had a metal band called Medieval Synthesis.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, that is a good name, isn't it?

[Chuck Bryant]

So he was just a conundrum.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, he was a conundrum for sure. And again, he got excommunicated. He had to escape by horse. Stolen horse.

[Chuck Bryant]

Ooh.

[Josh Clark]

I mean, he was not very monk like.

[Chuck Bryant]

No, but. All right, so we were talking earlier about empirical evidence and how that kind of fits in here. And the fact that if you can't, you know, like, you know, the sky is blue because you look up and you see it's blue. You know, a bird makes a whistle because you can hear the bird make a whistle. So it's very easy to sort of use that and say, sure. But if you don't, if you can't see it or hear it empirically or any of the senses experience it, it's very easy to poo poo. And you give a great example here with Lorentz and Einstein and kind of which one would win out? So both of these guys, both physicists, Einstein, obviously more popular, we'll see. For a very important reason. They both had the conclusion mathematically that with the space time continuum, the closer we get to moving at the speed of light, the more we slow down, which is hard to wrap your head around. So Lorentz comes out and says, explains it away because of changes that take place in the Ethereum, which he might as well have said a bit of Magic happens. Einstein didn't. And so the one we talk about today is Einstein and not Lorentz. That explanation of Einstein was more rooted in science. And he didn't say something wacky like the ether, which is something empirically you can't see or smell or taste.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

So Einstein, you know, he won that great battle.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. He very famously said, he goes, I don't know what's what, but I know it ain't got nothing to do with no ether.

[Chuck Bryant]

And one day my brain's going to end up in a jar in some guy's garage in New Jersey.

[Josh Clark]

Right. And everybody will love that picture of me with my tongue sticking out.

[Chuck Bryant]

And Walter Matthow will play me in a romantic comedy.

[Josh Clark]

So Lawrence violated that principle of plurality. Right. He added something to this that required an additional. Basically like a leap of faith. There was no empirical evidence that there was such a thing as the ether.

[Chuck Bryant]

And he said, did I say ethereum? And I didn't mean ether. And everyone went, no, no, no, it's too late, Lorentz. We heard you, buddy.

[Josh Clark]

And he's still. I mean, he's a respected physicist still. It's not like he was some crackpot or anything like that, because if you put his equations and Einstein's equations side by side, they came to the same conclusions. It was just explaining how Lorentz seems to have misstepped. Right, Right. But he was obviously at least as brilliant as Einstein when it comes to that. He's just a little nuts, apparently. So he violates the principle of plurality and relativity rather than Lorentz's manic ravings.

[Startpage Advertiser]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

And I don't believe we mentioned there is a word for that. If you can't prove it empirically, it doesn't exist. It's called positivism.

[Josh Clark]

Yes.

[Chuck Bryant]

Positivism isn't about having a good attitude.

[Josh Clark]

Right. And so this is. And this also happened during Einstein's working days, too. There was a guy named Ernest Mach. And Ernest Mach was so.

[Chuck Bryant]

Ernst.

[Josh Clark]

Ernst Mach. Thank you.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. No, he.

[Josh Clark]

That's. That's way better than Ernest.

[Chuck Bryant]

Or just one. Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Ernst Mach, he was so nuts on empiricism. He was a. He was an early. I think he was a physicist, if not a mathematician, one of the two. And he. He basically said, like, molecules don't exist. All this whole bubble over molecules and atoms and all this stuff. You're all crazy. We can't see them. They don't exist. So there's a. There's this kind of ironic twist that came from Einstein's working career where he actually he beat Lorentz, his rival to this theory, through Occam's Razor. But he also disproved this idea of that Ernst Mach, this thing about only believing what you can sense with your senses. This kind of other part of Occam's Razor in a subsequent paper that came a few years later that showed that molecules do exist. So the idea that Occam's Razor can be used both ways is something that just keeps coming up again and again and again. And we'll talk about how after a break. How about that?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, let's do it.

[Child]

Mom, can I have lingo? Kids? Dad, Lingokids, please.

[Parent]

When did we become the Lingokids house?

[Parent Narrator]

No idea. Last week it was dinosaurs.

[Child]

This week it's Lingokids.

[Parent]

Why Lingokids?

[Child]

Because it's the best thing ever. You can play games with astronauts, wild animals and superheroes.

[Startpage Advertiser]

With more than 4,000 interactive games, songs and shows, LingoKids is the number one entertainment platform for young kids.

[Parent Narrator]

So no dinosaurs and dinosaurs.

[Josh Clark]

Lingokids.

[Parent]

Everything kids love. Download it for free.

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[Josh Clark]

Okay, Chuck, so who uses Occam's razor? Obviously, everyone who was throwing money down on the cockfight between Lorenz and Einstein were using Occam's razor. They all went with Einstein's because his was the simplest, right?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Who else uses it?

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, I mean, you have a great section in this article about skeptics. And I know over the years of this show, over the past 10 years, we've had a lot of minor scraps with the skeptic community.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, that's pretty minor.

[Chuck Bryant]

Is that fair to say? Yeah, because, I mean, we have our skeptical side for sure, but there's, you know, when it comes to skepticism and skeptics, there's a. It's sort of on a sliding scale. There's a range of how you might feel about certain things. And you very astutely, I think, point out that if you are a true skeptic, then you will not use Occam's razor, like I did earlier, as a tool to disprove something, that you will only use it as a tool to consider different explanations. And there's a big difference there.

[Josh Clark]

There is. So, like that whole idea of seeing a ghost on film, right? So there's this example where somebody could say, so you just explained something about light and refracting and something with the film, and there was moisture in the air. Isn't it just simpler to say, no, that was a ghost?

[Chuck Bryant]

Exactly.

[Josh Clark]

And in that case, if you were a skeptic, you pull a little tuft of your hair out, maybe just start scraping at your cheeks until you bleed. Ideally, what you would say is, I get what you're saying, but you're bringing something into this that we don't know exists. Like, we do know light exists. We do know it refracts off of vapor. We do know how this can be captured on film. So, yes, that sounds very complicated. But ghosts don't exist as far as we know. We can't sense them empirically. But I would keep my mind open to the idea that ghosts could conceivably exist. The fact that I just showed that this is the reflection of light off of water vapor in this graveyard does not mean that your hypothesis about ghosts existing is wrong. It just means that's what's in this picture.

[CarMax Advertiser]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

That's a true skeptic.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right. Because things happen. And later on, the more fantastical explanation could be true and has been true. And you point out very plainly here that there's a couple of problems with this, and to me, this kind of says it all, is that it's subjective. Like, the whole notion of determining this is the most simple explanation is completely subjective. Because the ghost explanation, one person might say, no, the ghost explanation is clearly the simplest because I can just say one word, ghost, see there? And then you could fire right back. Well, no, I can fire back two words, photographic mishap, or maybe just mishap if they want to keep it completely equal. And that's the most simple. So it's completely subjective as to which one or anything that is the most simple, Right?

[Josh Clark]

Exactly. And then again, the idea that you can use Occam's razor to disprove something just by showing that it's not the simple, simple list explanation, that's not correct, that's not right. And so scientists will use Occam's razor in all sorts of different disciplines. Like, for example, if you're making an artificial neural network, right, like a learning machine, you might use decision trees, and you will use some sort of simple decision tree over a more complicated one that can get the same job done. That doesn't mean that it's necessarily the right one, but there are demonstrably good reasons for picking a simpler one over. It's less likely to break. It takes less time, it takes less energy to come to the computations. There are things that are valuable about it, but it doesn't mean that the other one is just wrong. And again, when you're using Occam's razor, say if you're making a neural network, or you're pouring through a data set or something like that, or you're trying to interpret a big data set,

[Chuck Bryant]

you're

[Josh Clark]

making, again, like you were saying, not just a subjective judgment about what's simpler, but that's all there is to it. You're making a subjective judgment about what's simpler, not what's right. It's not saying what's right. And this is a recurring theme that you just have to know because there's so many people out there that use Occam's razor to disprove other people's ideas. And that's just not at all what it was originally intended for. It's just a complete perversion of it, and it's just wrong. And that's not how science works. So if you see somebody out there doing this, thump them in the forehead.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And boy, then when you get into theology, it gets really interesting because this is sort of a prime example of the simplest explanation From a believer's point of view is very easy to say no. The Big Bang is incredibly complex and complicated. And it's pretty clear that the easiest explanation here and the simplest thing is God created life in seven days.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

But that's also discounting the process that it took God to create Earth, if that's what you believe, and just kind of bundle it up in a tidy package, say God created life. The Big Bang is super complicated and very coincidental if you really look at it. So this is the simplest explanation. Occam's razor proves that God exists.

[Josh Clark]

Right. And so that's been used time and time again by creationists. Right. Or people who believe in ghosts or people who counter empiricism in a lot of ways. Right?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

But on the other hand, you can find atheists who use Occam's razor to show that God does not exist. Because their point is if the universe tends towards simplicity and God is perfect and simplicity is perfection, then if God existed, the universe would be a lot more simpler. There wouldn't be this Big Bang thing that we have that happen. You would be right, creationists. And the fact that you're wrong means that there is no God, which is just like, my head's starting to spin a little bit with this. But it's a good example of how you can use Occam's razor, both sides can use Occam's razor to disprove the other person's point, which again shows how it's not meant to be used that way.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, yeah. And then you point out too, and talk about a head spinner, like something like photosynthesis is a pretty complex mechanism in nature. But I mean, who's to say that that isn't the simplest way to achieve food production in a plant? Maybe that is the simplest.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. We have no way of knowing that there is a simpler model of the universe or photosynthesis or of a shark or anything like that. And that even something that does seem superfluous. We can't say that in the larger scheme of things that it's actually the simplest way to do that. Right. So like a shark seems like, meh, maybe do you need that extra fin or something like that, or does a cow really need eight stomachs or do we really need two kidneys?

[Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

But what this point is saying is that there's. We don't have the information to look at everything on such a grand scheme of things to say, no, if humans only had one kidney, this other larger system would break down and this is actually the simplest way to do it.

[Parent Narrator]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

Or there's a cow with one stomach that we can compare it to.

[Josh Clark]

Right, right, exactly. So this whole thing, this is the point, Chuck, where I reach this very glaring idea that Occam's razor, or what Aristotle said, that simplicity is perfection. That's all man made, that's human made. Sure, that's a human made concept to value. Simplicity is human made. It is possible. The universe is complicated. You can come up with all sorts of examples of the universe being seemingly pretty complicated. Just the universe itself seems pretty complicated, frankly. Right, so that doesn't necessarily mean that the universe tends towards simplicity. It seems like humans value simplicity and the universe uses simplicity a lot. But that doesn't mean that simplicity is perfection or correctness. That's a human construct.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, yeah, but let's say in terms of engineering, it's probably a decent model to think, hey, the more complex this system is that I'm engineering, the more things there are to break. So we should probably try and make it as simple as possible. That still gets the job done. But that's not to say that it can be rudimentary, like you might need. It might need to be a little bit complicated to run at its most efficient, you know?

[Josh Clark]

Right, yeah, exactly.

[Chuck Bryant]

Or art, I mean, that's a whole different can of worms, you know, that's entirely subjective. Like you might find one drummer that says less is more. You just need to provide that basic backbeat and leave room. And then Stuart Copeland comes in the room and laughs and punches you in the face because you look like Sting

[Josh Clark]

thumps you in the head, you know,

[Chuck Bryant]

so that's entirely subjective when it comes to art. Like, you know, you've been to a museum and seen a 12 inch by 12 inch square painted red. And then you've also seen Jackson Pollock or Frida Kahlo Taylor. So again, it's just subjective as to simplicity and maybe, I don't know, can you apply it to art? Am I wrong there?

[Josh Clark]

No, not necessarily. I think that's a good point. Because it's subjectively valuing something, whether it's complexity or whether it's simplicity. It doesn't mean it's right. That's the point. Right. I think that's your point, is one's not right over the other.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I think that's my point.

[Josh Clark]

And then there's also plenty of circumstances where Occam's razor just doesn't help very much. Like, very famously, Ptolemy's idea of the universe, the Earth is the center of the universe. The geocentric universe, I think, is what it's called, where the Earth is the center of the universe, the sun, the moon, all the planets, and all the stars revolve around Earth is known to be wrong now, but for a long time, that's what everyone thought until the Copernican revolution, where we realized that not our universe, but our solar system is sun centered. The sun is at the center, and the Earth is actually moving around it. The thing is, if you look at. If you look at the explanations between the two, they are pretty close. And one's not necessarily less simple than the other. And if you put them side by side, Occam's Razor doesn't really help. You have to dig a little deeper and figure it out that, oh, actually, no, this one's right. Based on these observations, we think this one's right, but it has nothing necessarily to do with complexity. And then on the other side of the equation, just because something's complex doesn't mean that it's wrong. So the next time somebody starts flailing some Occam's Razor stuff at you, you tell them, josh, I'm gonna thump you. Do you want to be thumped?

[Chuck Bryant]

Why are you thumping everybody?

[Josh Clark]

Me?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Well, because they're asking for it.

[Chuck Bryant]

Is it just a very mild act of violence? Yeah, you don't want to be, too. You don't want to punch someone in the face?

[Josh Clark]

No, no. And plus, I mean, like, you shouldn't thump anybody anyway. I was totally kidding you.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay.

[Josh Clark]

Okay. Thanks for setting me up for that one.

[CarMax Advertiser]

Sure.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, one other thing. A lot of people say that Occam's Razor squashes free thought. So. I think that does kind of tie in with your art thing. You know what I mean?

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Like, feel free to go be complex. There's nothing wrong with it. Not everything has to be funneled through this Occam's Razor thing and made simpler just to make it better. Yeah, well, Chuck, we made it through this one.

[Chuck Bryant]

Sorta.

[Josh Clark]

It's better than jackhammers, I'll tell you that.

[Chuck Bryant]

I think you did well.

[Josh Clark]

I think you did as well, man.

[Chuck Bryant]

Thanks.

[Josh Clark]

That means that it was a good episode. If you want to learn more about Occam's Razor, you could read my so so article on the site howstuffworks.com just type it in the search bar. And since I said so. So it's time for listener mail. All right.

[Chuck Bryant]

I'm going to call this North Korea Part 2. We heard from a woman in Australia. We Were corrected. It just starts with an S. There is no aw.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

A woman in Australia named Claire Sutherland who actually had an interaction, in a way, with North Korea when she was editor at Australian newspaper called Little M. Big X. It's mx, but it's just X. Oh, is it?

[Josh Clark]

No.

[Podcast Announcer]

I don't know.

[Josh Clark]

They don't say awe before Australia, so.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, I gotcha.

[Josh Clark]

Probably not the little lamb.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, she's based in Elborn and they have additions in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane. And she says during the London Olympics, on our daily medal tally graphic, we listed north and South Korea as Naughty Korea and Nice Korea. Just kind of a cheeky thing, I guess she said. We'd been doing this for about a week when we received a call from a Wall Street Journal reporter based in Seoul seeking comment about the fact that North Korea just issued an official condemnation of our paper and its editor. At first our assumption was we were being punked, but he directed us to the official PR website of North Korea. Sure enough, there was a flowery diatribe and the communist English, which misnamed their paper Metro, by the way, and called us sordid bullying and petty thieves, declaring we would be cursed long in Olympic history. I think my favorite extract is this. She says editors of the paper were so incompetent as to tarnish the reputation of the paper by themselves by producing the article like that. There is a saying, a straw may show which way the wind blows. A single article may exhibit the level of the paper.

[Josh Clark]

Wow.

[Chuck Bryant]

Came down on her. She says the Wall Street Journal described the official statement as most unusual, and we ended up making some minor international headlines because of it. We ran the statement in full with a story about our sudden entry into world affairs. On the front page, the headline was North Korea Fires Missive. At the time, we thought it was equal parts ridiculous and funny. It happened today. I'd probably try and arrange new identities for me and my staff. Anyway, thanks from me and my dog for the show. Looking forward to seeing you in Melbourne. That is from Claire Sutherland.

[Josh Clark]

Thanks, Claire. That was a great story. Well, you really want this one over, don't you? Sure. If you want to get in touch with me and Chuck with a great story, you can tweet to us. I'm at Josh M. Clark. Chuck's at Moviecrush. We're both at Sysk podcast. Chuck's on facebook.com Charles Wchuckbryant and we'[e-mail] stuff you should know. You can send us an email to stuffpodcastowstuffworks.com and as always, join us at our home on the web stuffyou should know.com. For more on this and that thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com.

[Child]

Mom, can I have Lingokids? Dad? Lingokids, please.

[Parent]

When did we become the Lingokids House?

[Parent Narrator]

No idea. Last week it was dinosaurs.

[Child]

This week it's Lingokids.

[Parent]

Why Lingokids?

[Child]

Because it's the best thing ever. We can play games with astronauts, wild animals and superheroes.

[Startpage Advertiser]

With more than 4,000 interactive games, songs and shows, LingoKids is the number one entertainment platform for young kids.

[Parent Narrator]

So no dinosaurs.

[Child]

And dinosaurs.

[Parent]

Everything kids love. Download it for free.

[Kalpen (Podcast Host)]

Hey everyone, it's Kalpen. I'm inviting you to join the best sounding book club you've ever heard with my podcast, Hearsay, The Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club. Every episode, I nerd out with amazing guests and and dive into the best new audiobooks available on Audible. It's the book club for your ears. Listen to Earsay, the Audible and iHeart audiobook club on the iHeartradio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

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[Josh Clark]

Guaranteed Human.