Krugman: The argument from personal incredulity

[eomer]

13. Occam's Razor, according to Wikipedia...

Occam's razor (also written as Ockham's razor, Latin lex parsimoniae) is the law of parsimony, economy or succinctness. It is a principle urging one to select among competing hypotheses that which makes the fewest assumptions and thereby offers the simplest explanation of the effect.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam's_razor

That seems like a good definition to me, and it seems the same as the one I used.

Some people explain Occam's Razor as saying that the simpler theory is more likely but that's definitely not the case. There is no way (Occam's or otherwise) to know whether the simpler or a more complex theory is more likely until you can show one of them is false, at which point Occam's isn't needed anymore.

I'd be interested in another way of explaining or thinking of it; this stuff is interesting to me.