Sunday, January 17, 2021

The Philosopher's Razors:

  • Occam's razor: Simpler explanations are more likely to be correct; avoid unnecessary or improbable assumptions.
  • Hanlon's razor: Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.[4]
  • Hitchens's razor: "What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence."
  • Hume's guillotine: What ought to be cannot be deduced from what is. "If the cause, assigned for any effect, be not sufficient to produce it, we must either reject that cause, or add to it such qualities as will give it a just proportion to the effect."[5][6]
  • Newton's flaming laser sword: If something cannot be settled by experiment or observation, then it is not worthy of debate.[7]
  • Sagan standard: Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
  • Popper's falsifiability principle: For a theory to be considered scientific, it must be falsifiable.[8]
  • Grice's razor: As a principle of parsimony, conversational implications are to be preferred over semantic context for linguistic explanations.


  • Image may contain: text that says "Sometimes Occams razor dosen't cut the mustard. Every once in a while the most outrageous explanation is the true one.... if you hear hooves clacking and coming towards you, you expect a horse. But every once in a great while you will turn around and see a god damned Zebra. Cult of Eris Mistress of Discord"

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