SKS's Thursday night: “Who wants to be the biggest Intellectual”

Occam’s Razor:

“One should not increase, beyond what is necessary, the number of entities required to explain anything” - William of Occam.

Ashish writes;

My memory is failing me …. But this is how the story goes. In one of the SKS’s Thursday night (“who wants to be the biggest intellectual” theme nights !!) discussion, somebody stated the principle of Occam’s razor to me for the first time. And then we were let loose to prove the existence of something which might never be proved, to find the utility, and bias of this principle.

I’ll try to recall a brief introduction and then leave the stage for your subjective analysis (and your imagination for how to use it solve current objective).

Occam’s Razor is not a law, but a principle that makes sure what you are theorising on is accurately defined. At times one invokes it involuntarily while theorising. Occam’s razor comes without a proof and it is said that Occam’s razor will prove itself when the whole universe, with all its dimensions and times, is accurately determined. It is really absurd and its absurdity gets clearer when you invoke it. In another version (thanks to SKS), which I think I’ll be using in the present debate, the principle states:

“To explain a scientific theory, one must tend to minimise the number of parameters used to determine it”

To give a few example, to define absolute zero (-273 ◦C), the temperature at which no gas can exist, we use just the pressure (1 atmosphere) as a supporting parameter apart from the given temperature, what could be done is to also take into account the vessel the gases be in, sea level, time (as a dimension), effects of gravity, interactions of electrons to the nucleus, proximity of vessel to sun …and infinite amount of other bullshit. Similarly, we don’t find Newton’s laws holding there ground, we just add the point of reference (or reference frame) as one more parameter and never go into the quantum or relativity theory, the wind effects, temperature and pressure (both effecting volume and hence friction), uncertainty principle to define them. One can import the definitions of “science” and “human truth” from the Tagore-Einstein discussions support the given argument.

According to SKS himself, in response to the why? argument, to discover all points of a system, if we can define the origin first and then a few points to define its boundary we can determine the whole system around it (Infact, exactly like the way calculus functions). Invoking Occam’s razor is just the start of the process. Hence to determine the absolute truth, we invoke Occam’s razor first, define space time and other aspects of coordinate system first and then try to determine reality by exploring the human truths.

p s : For the uninitiated, SKS is Shiva Kumar Srinivasan, presently a professor in IIM- A, also taught in IIT Delhi (the above discussion is from one of his class in IIT Delhi). Ashish was his student, I also attended some of his classes and GD sessions.

Link: http://www.nwmangum.com/Occam.html