Occam's razor and the simplest explanation of reality

[Someone here]

When a kid asks his parents "where did I come from "? The parents tell him that they gave birth to him .but then the kid goes asking "but where did you guys come from "? And the parents say "well,we too were born from our parents and so on " but then the kid asks "where did all of it come from ? ". The question that the kid is asking is basically "where did all of reality come from "? And the parents either say that they don't know or more likely to say that "god created us ". But then of course the kid asks "but who created God " ? And the parents here get frustrated and say "well, nobody created God. God is just God. He is eternal " in other words its just the way it is. We've hit rock bottom .there is nothing more fundamental than God. And notice that this is not a mechanical answer .it's a mystical answer .it basically says that things are the way they are because God did it .and God just IS. Nobody created him . This is following the principle of Occam's razor.

Occam's razor demands that the simplest explanation should be accepted as truth unless there is sound reason for believing that it isn't the simplest explanation. It therefore stands to reason that thought should be seen as the only ingredient within reality...there is no such thing as thought independence, so called material reality can be dismissed as an unnecessary theory. The whole of reality can be conceived as existing within the realm of thought alone. In other words, we know thought exists because we experience it directly, material reality is only a supposition...a supposition that is not required to explain reality, therefore one we can cut away with the razor.

God is the encompassment of all thought, everything else that thinks is a subset of Him, dependent on him, though not necessarily controlled by Him.

However..If we truly follow along with Occam's razor..then the most accurate explanation to reality is that there is no explanation. Reality just exists .its a brute fact .reality itself is rock bottom .reality itself  is God.  We cannot go more fundamental than qualia/consciousness to talk about the brain and the neurotransmitters etc. No .the simplest answer is that reality exists .and that's all we know .that's the bottom line. 

 

[axiom]

The simplest explanation is to stop thinking entirely and just be. Hammer to the head!

(jk!)

[Someone here]

4 minutes ago, axiom said:

The simplest explanation is to stop thinking entirely and just be .

 

15 minutes ago, Someone here said:

..If we truly follow along with Occam's razor..then the most accurate explanation to reality is that there is no explanation

 

[Yarco]

I feel like someone can misuse occams razor to justify any belief system. Whatever you believe will always seem like the simplest, most obvious and logical answer.

[Someone here]

2 minutes ago, Yarco said:

I feel like someone can misuse occams razor to justify any belief system. Whatever you believe will always seem like the simplest, most obvious and logical answer.

It certainly can be misunderstood .if you want to know how you can prove the Earth is flat using Occam’s Razor? Do you want to prove God is the reason for everything in the Universe? Do you want to refute Einstein’s theories without knowing anything other than high-school physics? Use Occam's razor .

But that's not what I'm doing here .I'm giving the most extreme use of the razor. Reality exists and has no explanation. We don't need a separate God outside of reality creating it. Reality is self-explanatory. That's the simplest explanation possible. 

[axiom]

12 minutes ago, Someone here said:

It certainly can be misunderstood .if you want to know how you can prove the Earth is flat using Occam’s Razor? Do you want to prove God is the reason for everything in the Universe? Do you want to refute Einstein’s theories without knowing anything other than high-school physics? Use Occam's razor .

But that's not what I'm doing here .I'm giving the most extreme use of the razor. Reality exists and has no explanation. We don't need a separate God outside of reality creating it. Reality is self-explanatory. That's the simplest explanation possible. 

Yes, this is what all spiritual seeking ultimately boils down to. 

In youth, the seeking energy is wild and untamed.

As we get older and “wiser” we learn to accept (or become resigned to) the idea of some things being OK as they are. Less seeking is then required, but we don’t apply this intuition to all things. We still have triggers - particularly when our egos are dented - because we think it has relevance in some way to our own survival.

If we follow a spiritual path we might eventually learn to just rest in being, barely seeking at all. Total dissolution of self is enlightenment, but making enlightenment a goal seems to sabotage its chances. 

Having a “spiritual path” as such is generally very overrated. Just as many people will strengthen their ego as those who will reduce it.

Simply aging is probably the most effortless and most natural spiritual path. No spiritual path required. Ironing out the energetic wrinkle of selfhood seems to be a process which unfolds all by itself as we grow older. It needs no input or steering in particular. But that is not to say everyone starts from the same place. Some selves require more ironing out. 

[Someone here]

15 minutes ago, axiom said:

Yes, this is what all spiritual seeking ultimately boils down to. 

In youth, the seeking energy is wild and untamed.

As we get older and “wiser” we learn to accept (or become resigned to) the idea of some things being OK as they are. Less seeking is then required, but we don’t apply this intuition to all things. We still have triggers - particularly when our egos are dented - because we think it has relevance in some way to our own survival.

If we follow a spiritual path we might eventually learn to just rest in being, barely seeking at all. Total dissolution of self is enlightenment, but making enlightenment a goal seems to sabotage its chances. 

Having a “spiritual path” as such is generally very overrated. Just as many people will strengthen their ego as those who will reduce it.

Simply aging is probably the most effortless and most natural spiritual path. No spiritual path required. Ironing out the energetic wrinkle of selfhood seems to be a process which unfolds all by itself as we grow older. It needs no input or steering in particular. But that is not to say everyone starts from the same place. Some selves require more ironing out. 

The “spiritual path” promises a lot ..for example some people are searching for “the kingdom of heaven”, others for “enlightenment”. One thing for sure is that being on this journey takes courage  at times we can seem utterly blind or ignorant and leave ourselves confused, open and vulnerable. Recognising this, you do not have to accept what is written in this thread ..however, hopefully you are able to read with an open mind.

My personal spiritual journey started when I started working with a life coach. I then found the personal development and spirituality sections of the book store and I was hooked. Something clicked, and I have had the chance to listen to many influential speakers and explore many books relating to spirituality. I feel that I am on a spiritual path, but sometimes still get confused listening to others and find it hard to communicate what it really means.

 

I have come across many people referring to spirituality and the spiritual path. Here are some of the more common things I have seen described as spirituality:

“Finding Meaning”, “Love and Gratitude”, “Channeling and talking with Spirit/beyond”, “Being Here and Now”, “Dissolving the Ego”, “Eternal Life”, “A celebration of Life”, “Finding God”, “A journey into Self-Realisation” or “Yoga and meditation”. It could be said that the spiritual path is all of the above, yet none of them. This is the most difficult part .. those who talk about spirituality can be contradictory and paradoxical. The reason why the spiritual path can be described as none of them is because they are concepts of the mind which themselves cannot be “real”. In fact, the so-called enlightened masters tell us that anything of the mind cannot be real. Therefore, the above statements can only be signposts to something beyond .. something deeper and more profound than how most of us think of ourselves. The spiritual path seems to start in a world of confusion, endless distractions and deep pain. However, in my experience, knowing you are on a spiritual path .. no matter where you are .. gives you a certain feeling, a deep sense of trust, a sense that you are being looked after, a sense that everything really is ok.

[axiom]

And there’s nothing wrong with that sense of everything being OK, of course. It’s beautiful. And yet, the feeling of assured survival and sense-making reinforces, does not diminish, the self.

All seeking - all spiritual paths - may be seen as obstacles to enlightenment. 

The sense of finally finding something that really makes sense, whatever it is, is just reassurance for that which does not want to die, for that which wants to suffer less.

To speak of one of the preoccupations on this forum, God realisation is fascinating - but it is not an end to suffering. It’s an attempt to capture infinity in a butterfly net. It can provide some stunningly, ludicrously profound experiences and insights into consciousness, but it very literally has no end.

Think of the words “I’ve had a new level of awakening”, or “this time I’ve really had a complete awakening”… until the next awakening…!

The shortest and easiest route to infinity is to approach zero. To try to approach infinity by continuously expanding, expanding, expanding upwards and outwards… will eventually lead to madness. 

Go to zero.

I consider you one of the most enlightened people on this forum, and I reckon you’re 95%+ of the way there already.

Edited August 1, 2022 by axiom

[Someone here]

@axiom Though the spiritual path can involve suffering .. sometimes intense suffering .. it is also a path to happiness and fulfilment which are truly beyond imagining. The path is real and so are the rewards, but one must pursue it with an unreasonable amount of passion, discernment and devotion.

Then again, it’s not that difficult when you accept that the alternative is to remain in the dull loop of ordinary human existence as most of us experience it for the rest of your life.

35 minutes ago, axiom said:

I consider you one of the most enlightened people on this forum, and I reckon you’re 95%+ of the way there already.

Thanks but I don't think so .

[axiom]

@Someone here Some have suggested that a path providing meaning, fulfilment and happiness is merely reinforcement for the self; that a character might seemingly be able to pursue a thing, but the character doesn't exist - and neither does that which it pursues.

25 minutes ago, Someone here said:

Thanks but I don't think so .

You are very welcome. 

[Someone here]

14 minutes ago, axiom said:

Some have suggested that a path providing meaning, fulfilment and happiness is merely reinforcement for the self; that a character might seemingly be able to pursue a thing, but the character doesn't exist - and neither does that which it pursues.

Yes .seeking perpetuates the ego .

Enlightenment' tends to be a notion that has been accepted through time/thought and the self clings to the idea and pursues that idea/notion. So the destination seems to become more important than the exploration/observation. The destination corrupts the exploration/observation. Looking for a way out means I am not interested in the exploration/observation but instead to outcome of a self that “becomes enlightened”(psychological safety). 

We seem to take in ideas from the past(thought) and pursue those ideas to become something other than what we are that moment(escape). We seek what we have learned about enlightenment to end our pain, suffering, discontent. This itself is why we suffer. We are always looking to time (future) to solve psychological issues and that seems to be the root of those issues. We dis identify with what-is actually presently and we seek the idea, which is psychological evolution(time). We disidentify with “our experiences” which is the same as identifying with them. It’s in both cases a “movement of me/the chooser. 

[Scholar]

3 hours ago, Someone here said:

When a kid asks his parents "where did I come from "? The parents tell him that they gave birth to him .but then the kid goes asking "but where did you guys come from "? And the parents say "well,we too were born from our parents and so on " but then the kid asks "where did all of it come from ? ". The question that the kid is asking is basically "where did all of reality come from "? And the parents either say that they don't know or more likely to say that "god created us ". But then of course the kid asks "but who created God " ? And the parents here get frustrated and say "well, nobody created God. God is just God. He is eternal " in other words its just the way it is. We've hit rock bottom .there is nothing more fundamental than God. And notice that this is not a mechanical answer .it's a mystical answer .it basically says that things are the way they are because God did it .and God just IS. Nobody created him . This is following the principle of Occam's razor.

Occam's razor demands that the simplest explanation should be accepted as truth unless there is sound reason for believing that it isn't the simplest explanation. It therefore stands to reason that thought should be seen as the only ingredient within reality...there is no such thing as thought independence, so called material reality can be dismissed as an unnecessary theory. The whole of reality can be conceived as existing within the realm of thought alone. In other words, we know thought exists because we experience it directly, material reality is only a supposition...a supposition that is not required to explain reality, therefore one we can cut away with the razor.

God is the encompassment of all thought, everything else that thinks is a subset of Him, dependent on him, though not necessarily controlled by Him.

However..If we truly follow along with Occam's razor..then the most accurate explanation to reality is that there is no explanation. Reality just exists .its a brute fact .reality itself is rock bottom .reality itself  is God.  We cannot go more fundamental than qualia/consciousness to talk about the brain and the neurotransmitters etc. No .the simplest answer is that reality exists .and that's all we know .that's the bottom line. 

 

Remember that occam's razor is not really valid. There is no reason why the simplest explanation of reality is actually the true explanation of reality.

That's just what some chimp came up with, it's completely arbitrary.

 

And you have also consider, in regards to scientific theories, how much explanatory power a given theory gives you.

You can say reality is just the way it is, but does that help you predict anything? Not really, I can't really understand why the earth revolves around the sun with that explanation. "Because it is so!", well, that doesn't tell us anything really. A theory of physics and motion can give us a reason for why the Earth revolves around the sun, and we can extrapolate from that what the earth will do in the future. That's explanatory power, and therefore we ought to prefer that theory in regards to science.

Edited August 1, 2022 by Scholar

[Someone here]

11 minutes ago, Scholar said:

Remember that occam's razor is not really valid. There is no reason why the simplest explanation of reality is actually the true explanation of reality.

That's just what some chimp came up with, it's completely arbitrary.

 

And you have also consider, in regards to scientific theories, how much explanatory power a given theory gives you.

You can say reality is just the way it is, but does that help you predict anything? Not really, I can't really understand why the earth revolves around the sun with that explanation. "Because it is so!", well, that doesn't tell us anything really. A theory of physics and motion can give us a reason for why the Earth revolves around the sun, and we can extrapolate from that what the earth will do in the future. That's explanatory power, and therefore we ought to prefer that theory in regards to science.

It is actually very valid .if something or some phenomenon could be explained by one step ..why use two steps to explain it if it can be explained by just one ? Therefore the simplest explanation is the truest. 

 It says that (on average) the simplest solution is most likely to be correct. But sometimes, of course, the complex solution is the correct one.

So for example.. note that Creationism fails Occam’s Razor. “God did it” isn’t the simplest solution, because that would require either that God deliberately designed the world to lie to us and provide millions upon millions of pieces of strong evidence for evolution in order to fool us, or that millions upon millions of scientists have been engaged in a vast conspiracy to deceive the world, for well over 100 years. Both of these are far more involved and improbable than “The world is what the evidence indicates it to be. So both evolution, and a separate deity/God..or even the big bang theory are all unnecessary to explain reality . We don't need an explanation at all .the simplest explanation is that there is none . The present moment is pure uncaused magic .

 

[Scholar]

4 minutes ago, Someone here said:

It is actually very valid .if something or some phenomenon could be explained by one step ..why use two steps to explain it if it can be explained by just one ? Therefore the simplest explanation is the truest. 

You can't just assert this to be the truth, you have to give reason for why it follows.

So why is it the case that using one step instead of two steps to explain something makes a thing correct?

You could easily imagine that something works in two steps in reality, but we could still maybe have an explanation that only uses one step, yet missing the mark on what is actually happening.

 

5 minutes ago, Someone here said:

 It says that (on average) the simplest solution is most likely to be correct. But sometimes, of course, the complex solution is the correct one.

Right, but that was never established, how do we know the most simple solution is more likely to be correct than a more complex one?

 

6 minutes ago, Someone here said:

So for example.. note that Creationism fails Occam’s Razor. “God did it” isn’t the simplest solution, because that would require either that God deliberately designed the world to lie to us and provide millions upon millions of pieces of strong evidence for evolution in order to fool us, or that millions upon millions of scientists have been engaged in a vast conspiracy to deceive the world, for well over 100 years. Both of these are far more involved and improbable than “The world is what the evidence indicates it to be. So both evolution, and a separate deity/God..or even the big bang theory are all unnecessary to explain reality . We don't need an explanation at all .the simplest explanation is that there is none . The present moment is pure uncaused magic .

Just because something is less probable doesn't mean it isn't the case, that's the problem here. You are assuming that reality will perfectly coincide with what you deem most probable. Then you also have the reference class problem and so forth. It's really all just a chimp game in the end.

 

But even if you do play this game and confuse it for reality, you still have to have explanatory power, not merely simplicity of cause. To what degree does what you say explain reality, and what predictive power does it offer to us? To say things are the way they are because they are the way they are does not really explain anything to us, nor does it give us the ability to predict or explain particular phenomena.

[axiom]

@Scholar

21 minutes ago, Scholar said:

You still have to have explanatory power, not merely simplicity of cause. To what degree does what you say explain reality, and what predictive power does it offer to us? To say things are the way they are because they are the way they are does not really explain anything to us, nor does it give us the ability to predict or explain particular phenomena.

But he's right. It is precisely because the existence of the self is so tenuous that it keeps trying to reassert its existence. It truly believes it can find better and better ways to ensure its survival. And yet, nothing it does and nothing it thinks it understands will ever change anything at all.

The truth is, reality doesn't need to be explained. It is fine as it is - in just the same way as a piece of music. The self wants something to do of course. To the self, explanations and ideas seem vitally important.

Edited August 1, 2022 by axiom

[Someone here]

@ScholarWe go with the simplest explanation that covers all the facts. Any time we take a more complicated explanation, it's because the simpler ones, contradicted by rogue facts, don't work.

If we abandoned the Razor, then we would have an infinite number of answers to every question, and no way to choose between them.

If you had a quarter on your seat a moment ago, and now it's gone, and there's nobody else around, then there are a very few explanations that you will entertain: Maybe it fell off the seat, and you can find it by looking underneath. Maybe it slid under your leg, and you can find it by standing up.

Without Occam, you must also consider these possibilities:

1.All the other coins in the world have just disappeared too, and nobody will ever know why. And every time you check another coin to see if this hypothesis is correct, that coin will reappear just long enough to fool you.

2.God did it.

3.An invisible man did it.

4.Somebody wished for a quarter, and yours was the one.

5.The coin is still there, but light has decided to bend around it.

6.The coin is still there, but you've been hypnotized not to see it.

7.When you put the coin down, the side facing up was heads. That was the sixteenth time you got heads, so the Illuminati took the coin so that you won't notice that they've been messing with statistics.

8.One of the pins is corroded, so your connection to the Matrix is failing.

And on and on forever, with no way of one explanation more probable than another.

Edited August 1, 2022 by Someone here

[Someone here]

@JoeVolcano agreed ?.

 Occam's razor states that when given two explanations or competing theories that make the same predictions for the same thing, the simpler one is usually the correct one. And so when we look at possible explanations for the existence of the universe ..you can say there are multiple possibilities..either there is a separate deity who have created it ..or it emerged through the big bang ..or it's a simulation in some computer software behind the scenes..but notice that all these explanations are not the simplest .because you have to explain where the deity came from..or where did the big bang come from ..or where does the computer who's rendering the simulation came from .  The simplest explanation is simply that reality itself is its own cause .its eternal. We can't get more fundamental than appearances.

[Someone here]

@JoeVolcano cheers ?

[Ezo]

 Occam's razors will collapse upon itself .When you wake up there are an infinity of infinite possibilities

[Someone here]

Just now, Ezo said:

 Occam's razors will collapse upon itself .When you wake up there are an infinity of infinite possibilities

Care to elaborate? 

Mister 15 posts