Matthew MacDonald
1 min readMar 18, 2019

--

This is something I’ve always struggled a bit with in my mostly layperson’s understanding (physics minor here). In the context of a scientific theory, it seems to me that Occam’s razor is a principle that guides us toward whatever is scientifically fruitful. It says something like “if an idea doesn’t generate testable predictions, it’s not worth having in your model.” It doesn’t really say anything about the “truthiness” of that idea. In other words, non-local hidden values might be part of someone’s philosophical world view about quantum physics, even though it has no place in a practical theory, where it’s just a needless complication.

--

--

Matthew MacDonald
Matthew MacDonald

Written by Matthew MacDonald

Teacher, coder, long-ago Microsoft MVP. Author of heavy books. Join Young Coder for a creative take on science and technology. Queries: matthew@prosetech.com

No responses yet