1y ago

What popular quote are you tired of hearing?

Bonus points if it's usually misused/misunderstood by the people who say it

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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 "

255 comments