I was browsing the Wiki when I came across this marvellous and ingenious piece
here.Needless to say, I believe this particular page is completely and utterly wrong in its premises and its conclusions. For clarity, I will write the definition down:
"It states that among competing hypotheses, the hypothesis with the
fewest assumptions should be selected."
The author(s) of the post, it seems, haven't particularly understood the principle and have instead created this narrative that the hypothesis favoured by Occam's Razor is the original explanation or the explanation that makes the most
intuitive sense. The most intuitive answer does not equal the correct answer however.
The author(s) also fails to be able to understand what the word "assumption" and "hypothesis" means and fails to be able to recognise that these
DO NOT translate to modern day
theories and are not comparable.
Aside from the mention of gravitons, the conventional explanations discussed are
NOT hypotheses and they do
NOT give assumptions. They are theories and they are backed up by empirical evidence.
Along with the obvious bias approach to this page (something discredited in a wiki), the points have been utterly bastardised.
I will use the last point as the exemplar on this forum post:
"What's the simplest explanation; that the sun, moon, and stars are enormous bodies of unimaginable mass, size, and distances which represent frontiers to a vast and infinite unknowable universe teeming with alien worlds, galactic civilizations, black holes, quarks and nebulae, and phenomena only conceivable in science fiction; or is the simplest explanation that the universe isn't so large or unknown and when we look up at the stars we are just looking at small points of light exactly they appear to be?"
On the surface and due to how the author has wrote this, it seems that the current explanation endorsed by the scientific community makes the most assumptions(which are not assumptions) and then therefore should be discredited. Aside from the fact that Occam's Razor is not sacrosanct and does not hold up in all situations, it does not highlight the actual assumptions given by the explanations the author advocates.
What would it mean if all which is mentioned is "
only conceivable in science fiction; or is the simplest explanation that the universe isn't so large or unknown and when we look up at the stars we are just looking at small points of light exactly they appear to be"?
It would mean that:
1) Particle physics is demonstrably erroneous in all of its observations and theory. The atomic model is completely and utterly wrong, all observations that point to the existence of quarks are utterly wrong.
2) Measured sizes of planets, the sun and distances between stars are constantly producing results that are obviously not taking into account some sort of error. Some error that is systematically being ignored and has been ignored by all those who take these measurements since the inception of the equipments capable of gathering this data. Tom Bishop has notably said that the distance between the sun and the earth (and maybe the earth and other planets/stars) is erroneous because of the assumption that the earth is spherical. Apart from this being distorted, to say the least, it is at least an explanation. There is no explanation offered as to why the measured diameter, luminosity, density, volume, circumference, spectra of light (to name a few) of the sun and the planets are wrong however.
3) Observations made through telescopes, grounded and space alike are wrong. The fact that they undeniably show the existence of galaxies, stars and planets is, to the author, completely useless. Observations made to deduce the existence of black holes are wrong, and once again physicists and researchers in this field are completely oblivious.
4) "the universe isn't so large or unknown". Measurements for the expansion of the universe are wrong, red shift is wrong, the fact that the early universe contained only light elements does not credit the big bang theory, the fact there is the existence a cosmic microwave background permeating the universe does not credit a large universe etc.
5) To put it bluntly, the entirety of cosmology, astrophysics and astronomy is wrong.
The fundamental flaw in this page is that the author(s) tries to compare the theories and substantiated explanations advocated by the consensus to hypotheses that are not substantiated.
Occam's Razor would hold ground in this situation if everything being talked about was a hypothesis, this is evidently not the case. Occam's Razor is used as a guidance, it is NOT applicable in this situation.
The forum page should be severely changed or removed in my opinion.
Thank you for reading. (Sorry for the long post)