Divine Hiddenness

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

You dating Ms Jolie is a terrible example of Occam’s Razor. It isn’t supposed to help you dismiss a ludicrous fact out of hand, but to help determine the likeliest explanation for an observed fact by not multiplying entities unnecessarily. Like this:

Observation: Brian37 is dating Angelina Jolie.

Explanation #1: Ms Jolie has legitimately fallen for Brian’s wit, charm, and devastatingly gorgeous face and figure.

Explanation #2: Ms Jolie has suffered a traumatic brain injury and follows Brian around in the expectation that he will explode in a shower of candy.

Occam’s Razor would indicate #2.

Boru

Gotta give you credit for this, and a far more likely scenario. But no, it does not negate the idea of dismissing an outrageous claim once one accepts that there is a HUGE difference between dismissing a claim based on probability and current information, and blindly clinging to the past "just in case".

I think you miss my point. No reasonable person in their right mind would blindly swallow my claim. 

Just like Galileo was right and the Church was wrong about the nature of our solar system. The widespread belief was that the sun went around the earth, but the truth was that the earth goes around the sun. The church in this example would be me, in my Angelina example. Galileo in that example would be "Brian, you are full of shit". 

I can make a bullshit fantasy claim about dating Angelina Jolie all I want. The only point I was making, is that once someone were to point out I was full of shit, why would anyone cling to that falsehood?

But Occam's Razor is not about dismissing a claim, it is about evaluating competing theories that seek to explain the same fact (or set of facts). It says nothing about the facts being true, or which theory is correct, only which theory is more preferable.

Boru