The razor principle versus conspiracy theories Was it blowback or a number of sinister conspiracies which ‘explain the rise of militant Islam, 9/11 and what transpired since the overthrow of Gaddhafi The development of the Occams razor principle is attributed rightly or wrongly to the Franciscan friar and philosopher, William of Ockham. The principle in fact has a long history both inside and outside Christianity. For instance, Ptolemy stated in the 1st century, “We consider it a good principle to explain the phenomena by the simplest hypothesis possible.” Saint Thomas Aquinas stated, “it is superfluous to suppose that what can be accounted for by a few principles has been produced by many.” The principle is more commonly described as the simplest answer is most often correct, although this is an oversimplification. The correct interpretation is that entities should not be multiplied needlessly The most common non-philosopher ways to say it is that, “other things being equal, a simpler explanation is better than a more complex one.” There are various caveats to this theory. For instance, you look for the simplest explanation until and unless you arrive at such a point that a slightly more complex explanation actually let’s you explain better what you have observed. In criminology, the reason family and friends are always the first to be considered during a murder investigation is because statistically they are the ones most often guilty. But, if someone is being “set up,” the more complex explanation may be the better one. What does all this have to do with conspiracy theories? Well, almost inevitably every conspiracy theory is a long and complex explanation of events that can be more simply explained by other means. The conspiracy line of reasoning contains too many suppositions: If this happened, then this may have happened. Too many ifs is a sign that a statement needs Occamizing and clarifying. In fact conspiracy theories are the opposite of Occam’s Razor. Where the razor cuts away the superfluous, conspiracy theories add it in order to protect the kernel of truth they rest upon. Once the razor exposes that truth, the conspiracy theory tends to fall apart under its own weight. One famous example of Occams razor in action is found in conspiracy theories surrounding the NASA moon landings. Many conspiracy theorists believe that the first Moon Landing was staged and filmed in a studio, part of an elaborate hoax. Their justification relies upon many twisted and convoluted theories, whereas the NASA argument is fairly straightforward. Therefore, using Occams razor, the NASA argument should be regarded as correct. This is not the same as saying that it is proved, only that it is best to investigate the simplest theory first. Another conspiracy theory is the one that claims that the destruction of the World Trade Center was actually a USA government plot. The reasoning necessary for that involves various steps, but the most difficult one is the involvement of dozens, maybe hundreds of people, who are able to keep a hermetic silence before, during, and after an entire range of events, which include the deliberate falsification of events by people in several states, in both public and private organizations, in foreign countries, and all without anyone breaking the hermetic silence As to the conspiracy theory surrounding 9/11 no one offers an explanation as to why would a nefarious group within the government go through the logistical nightmare of crashing airliners into buildings in addition to rigging those buildings beforehand when a massive truck bomb, Timothy McVeigh-style, would have sufficed? Was that elaborate scheme really necessary in order to galvanize the political will to invade a foreign country for oil? And as Noam Chomsky points out in the video below, why implicate nationals from a major ally Saudi Arabia instead of people from the very country the government so desperately wanted to invade, Iraq? This is where the Occam razor principle seem to make more sense - “other things being equal, a simpler explanation is better than a more complex one.” The Occamists would however debunk the conspiracy theory in favour of the more simple explanation Blowback Chalmers Johnson defined, ‘blowback’ “as a way of thinking of an individual, a class, a nation or an empire…” when employed in the arena of “international conflicts” this way of thinking, “has a tendency to blow back onto the party releasing it. The maxim of never letting a good crisis go to waste certainly held true for abusive power structures all across the globe after 9/11, but such an atrocity was not due to some elaborate conspiracy , it was inevitable due to nearly a century of nurturing and exploiting radical Islamists to serve the interests of the British and American Empires: …When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in the 1980’s, the West, led by the United States, countered by implementing the “Islam” strategy. The British strategy manifested or transmogrified into American support for the ‘holy warriors’ against the Soviet invasion.. Chalmers Johnson defined, ‘blowback’ “as a way of thinking of an individual, a class, a nation or an empire…” when employed in the arena of “international conflicts” this way of thinking, “has a tendency to blow back onto the party releasing it.” Whereas Britain concocted and propelled the “Islam” option into strategic consideration amongst policy makers during the Cold War period, it was then the United States which was largely seen to “release”, implement and support this policy in Afghanistan in the 1980’s. In conclusion, it needs to be emphasised that as the provenance of this “Islam” strategy pre-dates the Cold War and even the emergence of the United States as a superpower, there is every reason to believe that it will also outlive a perceived declining United States. We can now see this in Libya where NATO has worked in conjunction with Libyan Islamists to overthrow the Gadhaffi regime. youtube/watch?v=SRV_MsbAZv4#t=390 The above are quotes from a Post by xraymike79 in Capitalism, Climate Change, Corporate State, Empire, Military Industrial Complex, Peak Oil You can read the post in full collapseofindustrialcivilization/2014/05/10/occams-razor-dispels-many-outlandish-conspiracy-theories/
Posted on: Mon, 30 Jun 2014 21:30:42 +0000
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