Cut To the Chase: Philosophical Razors Part 2
I’ve already written about philosophical razors before in my very first article here on Medium, and I was going to leave it at that: after all, I had covered all the major ones and mentioned several others. Recent encounters with new kinds of stupidity and cajoling from some friends have, however, managed to get me to change my mind about writing a second part. Also, this topic is something I am familiar with and won’t take too much time to research; I’m dying trying to keep up with college as is.
Let’s start with Newton’s Flaming Laser Sword– even its name reminds me of lightsabers, spaceships and the Star Wars franchise. It states that ‘if something cannot be settled by experiment or observation, it is not worthy of debate.’ Devised by a fellow named Mike Alder, it is said to be sharper and more dangerous than the humble Occam’s razor, and rightly so, for it is not to be used in all aspects of life; instead, its use is solely in fields where experiments can be used as proof. In areas like literature and politics, it holds little water because they are not subjects where experiments can prove much. Despite this, they are still important and require discussion. Within the realm of science, however, it reigns unchallenged, cutting away idiotic hypotheses and stupid conclusions like there is no tomorrow.
During my childhood, I had this eccentric acquaintance who disliked losing, be it at games, arguments, or even just who got to stand first in line for food at a buffet. Staying around him was a pain due to his near-constant tantrums, punctuated by bouts of bragging about how lucky I was to even be allowed near him. One time, he decided he just had to enlighten me about his theory that Africa didn’t exist until the year 2000, which he called ‘XS Ground Making’ (XS meant extra secret). This was during a private party, with us two the only kids around, forcing me to hang out with him. So while the grown-ups made awkward jokes and pretended to be interested in each others’ various medical conditions, I learned that ‘New Land’ was an anagram of ‘De-Lawn’, and since Africa had the Sahara desert on which one cannot have a lawn, it proved that Africa was, in fact, a New Land.
Astute readers would have realized that ‘New Land’ and ‘De-Lawn’ are not, in fact, anagrams. My acquaintance was only too happy to explain this: since ‘New Land’ has 2 N’s, we get a 2. 0 has no value, so we add it to the end, getting 2000, giving the year when Africa suddenly appeared on Planet Earth. I had nothing better to do and also wanted to prove this fellow wrong for once, so I tried to show him why this haphazard insanity did not mean anything. He started giving even more convoluted counters, and I provided a rebuttal for each. It ended as you’d expect: when I declared that his stupid ‘theory’ was complete hogwash, he started bawling, gathering the attention of all the adults present, some of whom were definitely relieved that they would not have to hear about their coworker’s aunt’s diarrhea again. I was given a lecture about being ‘considerate of others’ feelings’, and then the party dispersed. If only I had known about Newton’s Sword then, I would’ve realized the argument was pointless and refrained from challenging him over it. Or perhaps I wouldn’t; it did give an odd sense of satisfaction to see him desperately fumbling around for an argument and failing to find any.
The next razor is the Sagan Standard, which is summed up rather nicely within five words: ‘Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.’ This is precisely what keeps me sane in this world filled with idiocies such as ‘Condensation tails from aircraft are actually poisonous chemicals!’ or ‘The Illuminati secretly controls everyone!’ or ‘Africa was suddenly created in the year 2000!’. It is similar to Hitchens’s razor, only more targeted towards conspiracy theories and wildly improbable hypotheses.
This reminds me of an exchange I had with an anti-vaxxer online, who claimed that vaccines contained ‘dead babies.’ When I asked her what proof she had, she sent me the links to some anti-vax websites. After I explicitly proved their claims wrong, she told me there was one other reason she believed them: her baby had started crying when it was time for his vaccination appointment. She triumphantly told me that it was because he could ‘feel the souls of the dead children within the syringe’. I was speechless; I mean was it so difficult to understand that her kid was crying because he was being poked in the bum with a sharp needle? I blocked and reported her for child abuse; anyone who seriously believed such insanity (and you can never tell with these folks) clearly needed help ASAP.
The final razor isn’t strictly a razor, but is entertaining and valuable enough to deserve its place in this article. In medical circles, there is a saying which goes something like this: ‘When you hear hoofbeats behind you, don’t expect to see a zebra.’ Originally coined by Dr. Theodore Woodward of the University of Maryland (where horses were much more abundant than zebras), it has spread far and wide, with almost every hopeful doctor having heard of it some time or the other. A derivative of Occam’s razor, it is a directive to doctors to diagnose a patient with inconclusive symptoms based on the commonness of various diseases. Medical students and newly-minted doctors are more likely to believe a patient has a rare disease than ones with experience due to the mind’s tendency to remember striking and unusual things more clearly than mundane ones. What is remembered more easily is judged to be more probable, something known as the availability heuristic. This saying was coined to counteract these built-in biases of the human brain.
I still remember one of my hypochondriac classmates who used to advertise his latest affliction to anyone who would listen. Forget waking up and choosing violence; he instead used to wake everybody else up and only then choose violence. One time he found there were two microscopic dots side-by-side on his ankle after a hike, which he assumed was a snakebite (!). We tried to tell him that there were almost no venomous snakes in the area and that if something had bitten him, he ought to have felt it, but to no avail. He promptly marched to the hospital, where he stayed until breakfast ended (it was a residential school). We heard about this near-death experience of his for weeks afterwards.
Another time a beetle landed on him when he was going for a bath. He immediately declared he was poisoned, raised an enormous hullaballoo about it, even threatening to kill the beetle (?!), and stopped only because he needed to go to the hospital. Later on, a few of us tried to locate the insect that was the source of all of this, but it was nowhere to be found. In the end, even the doctor got tired of his antics, forbidding him from coming more than twice a week. The Zebra aphorism would have really come in handy here, though I am not sure he would’ve listened to it.
Logic has been and will always be a scarce resource in the human population; at least now you have some tools to defend yourself with in case your reserve is ever attacked.
Proofreaders: Mokshit N., Durga C.
