Hey, everybody, tour announcement, it's just me. Chuck. Josh isn't here for this one. We had to get it out the door. So apologies for fifty of stuff you should know. But we have added two dates to uh the two thousand eighteen tour, and there may be another couple to come. You never know. But everybody, we asked Salt Lake City ins and Utahn's should we come there, and boy, we heard from you, so we're coming. It's that easy. Tuesday October, we are coming to Salt Lake City for an evening with stuff you should know at the Grand Theater and we are super excited. I'll tell you what. You guys really came through on the emails and social meds and let us know that we would see some love if we came to Salt Lake City, a city we've talked about often in the past. So we are a coming Tuesday, October twenty three, and we decided, hey, we're gonna be out there, we might as well add another city that we've never been to. So it is your lucky day, Phoenix eras Zona and dare I say, Tucson and in the Greater Phoenix area drive over to Phoenix and come see us on Wednesday October at the Van Buren. And this is also an evening with stuff you should know. I don't even know what that means, but it sounds a little more regal than normal. So come see us October Salt Lake City and Phoenix. Uh, you know what, I don't even know if tickets are on sale. I believe by the time this announcement goes up, tickets will be on sale, and you can go to the Van Buren website or to the Grand Theater website to get your ticket links. I will try and have them up very soon on s y s K live dot com, but I don't know if I'll get to that today, but look forward soon and we can't wait to see you, guys. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles Chuck Bryant, and there's guest producer Tristan over there, so it's stuff you should know. I don't know how these are going to release, but as you've noticed, Tristan weirdly grew out his mustache in the last hour. Again, he's quick, He's very fast. He can make it go in and out, in and out. Woooo what is that? It's like he's growing his mustache and it's sucking it back in, sucking it back in, you know, like a reverse Plato. Right. Do you remember that Plato set with the like a little meat grinder. No, there was one where like you could grow a mustache on I dude, I think I remember that. I would imagine if you could reverse it too. It was called the Plato Nightmare set. Yeah, is that your nightmare? Growing Plato mustache? Waking up like that? Yeah, I've had that dream about once a week for about thirty five years. Like all the rest of you is chuck, but just your mustaches Wallace and alm it. Yeah, dude. Yesterday, I h there was a bad smell. Emily and I were having a glass of wine at a wine bar and there was a bad smell nearby. I think it was a dumpster or something. And they were growing fresh herbs at this wine bar, and I rubbed a rosemary bush and then swiped it all over my mustache. Uh In. Emily's mind was blown. She was just like, oh my God, like I can't believe, like that's an actual use for facial hair. Yeah, I guess just to hold in that smell. It was like, well, you can wipe it on your upper lip. It's probably the same thing. Maybe the hair retains more essential oils. Which essential oils? Man, people are clamoring for that episode. Yeah, we should do that. We will eventually. It's been a big part of my life for two or twelve years now, essential oils. We'll talk about it someday, but not today. No, no, because Chuck's gonna stumble through a philosophy podcast. It's a yeah, I guess it is philosophy. It's the philosophy of knowledge. Epistemology is another way to put it. But specifically, Chuck, we're talking today about a little ditty you may have heard of before called acams razor, called the Gambler. Have you have you ever you've heard of ocums razor before? Right, Well, so much so that I thought for sure we had covered this, But um, I realized that we just talked about it quite a bit in the scientific methods. I'm not at all surprised because a lot of people say that the basis of science, which is how humans approach um nature in our universe and us and everything. Scientifically, the basis of that is ocams razor and if if acams razor sounds familiar but you can't quite place it, You've probably heard it as something like um, given two possible outcomes or explanations or whatever, the simplest version is probably the right one. Yeah, it's a pretty even that, in its simplicity is is beautiful. The mere statement itself is an example of its simplicity and how wonderful it can be just to think, like, yeah, you know what, let's get through all the gobbledegook. I think the easiest way to explain this, whether it's a a what do you call the orb and a photo Yeah, it's not. It's not your great grandfather coming to visit you on a different plane. It's really just an error with your photograph. Or it's a it's the flash um yeah, reflecting off like water vapor in the air. Or Kennedy probably acted alone. Kennedy he shot himself from afar. Yeah. I clearly meant to say Oswald acted alone, because that is a plus explanation, not this very convoluted deep um plot that goes that a hundred people were involved in to assassinate Kennedy. So we'll talk about all that, because what you're doing right now is has become pretty standard. You're using ocams razor to disprove other people's points. There's this is a total and complete misuse of ocams razors, not the original intention. The original intention had nothing to do with saying that's wrong. Is just a heuristic device, a guide, a rule of thumb that tells you that, because things tend to be more simple in the universe, if you if you're doing something, don't make it harder than it has to be. Don't add more to it than is needed to get the job done. And there's actually a couple of ways to put this, and both of them get attributed to William of Ockham, who will talk about in a second. But one is called he sounds like a baseball manager. But one is called the principle of plurality harder to say fast than you would think, and that is translated from the Latin plurality should not be positive without necessity. And the other is the principle of parsimony, which is it is pointless to do with more what is done with less. From what I understand, they are one and the same Oh really, I could not find anyone who could explain the difference. And I see them interchangeably, not just like on some dudes blog, but unlike you know, the the the Internet Encyclopedia Philosophy or the Stanford Encyclopedia Philosophy, like they don't seem to be different. Well, parsimony, it seems different to me because that specifically is like not using resources, not spending money if you don't have to. And that's SEMs different than plurality. Okay, well then then let's explore it. So plurality adding to something, doubling something, maybe just making it more than just the singular. He's saying plurality should not be positive without necessity, right, so I guess what he's saying. Then if they are different, then if you're if you're guessing at something, if you're trying to explain something, don't make it harder than it is, don't make it bigger than is absolutely necessary to explain its sense. Or and this is a really big point that we'll see in a minute. William of Ockham really was saying, don't don't add on to something beyond what you know to be true and correct, which a lot of people over time. And I think he actually maybe explicitly wasn't empirersist have said William of Ockham wasn't empirersist. He was saying that that you need to experience things through your senses to know that they are true. Yes, empirical evidence if I can look at it or smell it, or taste it or feel it. What's the fifth one? Uh, tickle it, tickle it. And then the sixth one, of course we know means Bruce Willis is really dead. See the ghost of it. Uh. Yeah, if there's no empirical evidence, if you cannot experience it with one of your senses, then um, it's it's poo pooed. So so it is so. And those two things, like you really especially modern science, especially science these days, you put them together. It's given two things. Go with the simpler explanation, and you don't don't believe anything that you can't sense one way or another through your senses empirically. Right, you put those together, you have the basis for modern science. And so the idea that that that things that are simpler are better, or the idea that the universe is simpler, Like when you start to think about it. It's all over the place, right, Like the the idea that the you universe is based on simpler being better is found everywhere, right, So, like there's things that things have fewer parts, things that require less energy, the encapsulation of larger ideas into smaller amounts of words or theories or whatever. All these things are very much prized by humanity. So it just kind of makes sense that acams razor is a sensible thing and that you could actually use it to uncover the mysteries of the universe. But again, that's not really necessarily the case, to tell you the truth. No, I mean, there's there's gonna be a lot of uh and and this stuff is kind of fun, just a lot of back and forth on Acam's razor throughout this whole thing, because there is no idea and that's kind of part of the whole jam of Bockham's razor, because there is no right or wrong here. You know, what's weird is right? A lot of people point to it though that it's this is right. I just proved you wrong, razor and that's just not true. And all right, should we take a break early? Okay? Yeah, I think we should take a break now because I need to get my head wrapped around this, and we'll come back getting the way back machine and visit Billy Ackum. Okay, so now Billy Ackum sounds like a recording star. Oh sure, like Billy Ocean. Yeah, get also my razor and get into my car, so that we should say the razor too. It's a philosophical term. It's the term of philosophy. The razor used to scrape away unnecessary stuff. So it's Acom's razor. So let's go back and me Billy Yakum shown. Yeah. And you wrote this by the way back in your in your article righting days uh, And you point out very astutely that this is from a time in our history of the world where you might not have had a surname. You may have been William of Ockham, which is the case here, which is in England. And he lived between about twelve eighty five and thirty nine, and he was a philosophical dude and a Franciscan monk. And he very much like you point out, took his valid poverty very seriously and lived a very meager, humble life. Yeah he did. He also expected the church to take the same vow of party, and he actually butted heads with the Church quite a bit, so much so that he ended up getting excommunicated, as we'll see. But he um, he was the real deal as far as like a true believer went. The weird thing about William of Akam was that he was also a genuinely independent thinker and a rationalist, which at the time rationalism and the church did not go hand in hand. They were there was really not much rationalism. So for an idea of the idea for this this upstart Franciscan monk to start questioning the ideas of the church. And not only that, but how the the leaders of the church conducted themselves and how much money they surrounded themselves with and how much power they had politically. This is it was a big deal, all right. Yeah. And he is not He did not invent this line of thought, um, as much as he's probably attributed to this to people that uh just know him from like a jeopardy board. He h. This is already a line of thought well established by this time in the medieval times, and he was just he kind of boiled it down to those two sentences that you were talking about. So in one could understand it, he could put it on a bumper sticker and a T shirt and sell it. Right. So it was Aristotle who was the guy who came up with this idea first, that that simplicity equals perfection, and perfection equal simplicity, said, the more perfect a nature is, the fewer means it requires for its operation. Right, So that makes sense. That speak to me. But then over time, in between Aristotle and William it kind of got expanded. So let me give you an example of that same thought from Robert gross Test who was an early scientist also a theologian I believe too. Here was his his version of it, That is better and more valuable, which requires fewer other circumstances being equal, For if one thing we're demonstrated from many and another thing from fewer equally known premises, clearly that is better, which is from fewer because it makes us no quickly, just as a universal demonstration is better than particular because it produces knowledge from fewer premises. Is that similarly in natural science, in moral science, and in metaphysics, the best is that which needs no premises, and that better that which needs the fewer other circumstances being equal. Boy, the ironies there are rich, right. So within less than a hundred years, William of Ockham comes along and he's just like, plurality should not be positive without necessity Robert, and Robert was like, well, yeah, I guess that's one way you could say it. So so I want to say something though, Um, before we keep going, Chuck actually found a correction of my own article that I missed before. What's that? It turns out that they think now that a another um theologian slash scientist from uh William of Ockham's era named John Dunn Scottis was the one who really encapsulated this this principle of plurality and principle of parsimony, and that it was a guy from the nineteenth century, William Rowan Hamilton's Irish mathematician, that he was the one who misattributed it to William a. Ackam. So is William Avakam just a uh and no nothing, no, no, His writings definitely included this stuff and he never took credit for this. But they think that that it was actually um John's done scott Is who encamped who encapsulated it the way that we tend to think of it now bumper stickers, but right, But William of Akam thought this way and he was a radical thinker and a rationalist, as we'll see. Right, And like you kind of teased out earlier, he did butt heads with the church over this. He wrote a lot about it, and the church was not into it, and Pope John the what is that twenty two? Um? He they kind of squared off on this, and of course the pope wins all battles, at least back then. Uh. And he was excommunicated and several of his his monk brothers, and I take that to mean not real. There's right, we're excommunicated. In thirty eight he went to Munich seeking refuge. He was protected there by Emperor Louis the fourth, and uh, Ultimately he went out because he started writing papers about Pope John the twenty two saying he's a heretic, and people ultimately believed him. Right. He he definitely made some pretty convincing points. And he also again like if you're saying I took avour poverty, the church really should too. And the church isn't poverty stricken and you are. That gives you a little more credibility from the outside as well. So there there's some reasons why William of Bakum is this theologian, a devout Franciscan monk, is looked upon as one of the fathers of western um science like the foundation of Western science right, or science in general um. And the reason why is he argued against the prevailing ideas at the time, which is called medieval synthesis. And this is very much championed by Thomas Aquinas, who's a famous theologian. I believe he was a saint, and one of the reasons he was canonized was because of this. Thinking about this, but the whole medieval synthesis thing was that God was first and foremost everything. Right, you were, you were a member of the church, just as much as you were a member of your country, a citizen of your country. Um. All human knowledge came from God, and Thomas Aquinas he was it wasn't just like the end. Thomas Aquinas used philosophy to prove that sentiment that all human knowledge came from God, and here is how. And basically it took the idea of cause and effect and said that you can trace every effect back to a cause, back to another effect back to another cause. But ultimately you were going to end up on God, and that all of our conceptions of everything arose from God's conception, and that God will that we understand things this way, which means that this is the perfect way to understand it, which means it's right right. So that is not what William Wacam thought. He was again a rationalist who said, um, no, we tend to think things or things because that is that arises in the human mind from cognition, not from God. And this dude was not a heretic. He believed that you didn't apply rationalism to God, that God required faith, and rationalism stood on its own, it was a different thing, and you couldn't know God through your senses. God was elsewhere. Leave God out of this. And the fact that he was able to really successfully lay like a philosophical groundwork for this, a rational groundwork for it. It's one thing today to be like I'm a secular humanist. You know, I'm rational. Forget the church that's today. This is at a time when this guy is saying this and the Church has the power to burn you at the stake. Like he was. He was a stand up rational thing, right, which kind of makes him a hero of rationality today. But don't. And this is another perfect example of how Akam's razor gets confused. Akam himself gets confused too. He's a hero of science. But it was also one of the more devout human beings walking the earth at the time. It was a monk for basically his whole life, and also had a metal band called Medieval Synthesis. Oh that is a good name, isn't it. So he was he was just a conundrum. Yeah, he was a conundrum for sure. And again he got excommunicated. He had to escape by horse, stolen horse. I mean, he was not very monk like. No, But all right, So we were talking earlier about empirical evidence, um and how that kind of fits in here, and the fact that if you can't you know, like you you know the sky is blue because you look up and you see it's blue. You you know a bird makes a whistle because you can hear the bird make a whistle. So uh, it's very easy to sort of use that um and say sure, but if you don't, if you can't see it or hear it empirically or any of the senses experience it. Uh, it's very easy to poopoo. And you give a great example here, um with Lawrence and Einstein, and kind of which one would win out. So both of these guys, both physicists, UM, Einstein obviously more popular. We we'll see for a very important reason. They both had the conclusion mathematically that with the space time continuum, the closer we get to moving at the speed of light, the more we slow down, which is hard to wrap your head around. So Lawrence comes out and says, explains it away because of changes that take place in the ether, which he might as well have said, a bit of magic happens. Uh, Einstein didn't. And so the one we talked about today is Einstein and not Lawrence. That explanation of Einstein was more rooted in science, and he didn't say something wacky like the ether, which is something empirically you can't see or smell or taste. So Einstein, you know, he won that great battle. Yeah, he very famously said, he goes, I don't know what's what, but I know it ain't got nothing to do with no ether. And one day my brain's gonna end up in a jar and some guy's garage in New Jersey, right, and everybody will love that picture of me with my tongue sticking out, and Walter math that will play me in a romantic comedy. So Lawrence violated that principle of plurality, right, it added something to this that required an additional basically like a leap of faith. There was no empirical evidence that there was such a thing as the ether. And he said, did I say ether? And I didn't mean ether? And every went no, no, no, it's too lady. And he's still I mean, he's a respected he's a respected physicist. Still, it's not like he was some crackpot or anything like that, because if you put his equations in Einstein's equations side by side, they came to the same conclusions. It was just explaining how Lawrence seems to have misstepped, right, But he was obviously at least as brilliant as Einstein. When it comes to that, he's just a little nuts apparently. So, so he violates the principle of plurality. And now we understand relativity rather than Lawrence's manic ravings. Yeah, and I don't believe we mentioned there's a word for that. If you can't prove it empirically, it doesn't exist. It's called positivism. Yes, positivism isn't about having a good attitude, right, and so this is and this also happened during Einstein's working days too. There was a guy named Ernest Mock, and Ernest Mock was so Ernest Mock, thank you. That's that's way better than Ernest Ernst Mock. Um. He was so nuts on empiricism. He was. It was an early I think he was a physicist, if not a mathematician, one of the two. And he he basically said, like, molecules don't exist. All this whole bubble over molecules and atoms and all this stuff, you're all crazy. We can't see him. They don't exist. So there's a there's this kind of ironic twist that came from Einstein's working career where he actually um he beat Lorenz, his rival to this theory, through this through Ockham's razor. But he also disproved this idea of um that Earnst Mock, this thing about only believing what you can sense with your your senses, this kind of other part of Ockham's Razor, and a subsequent paper that came a few years later that showed that molecules do exist. So the idea that that ocams razor can be used both ways is something that just keeps coming up again and again and again, and we'll we'll talk about how after a break. How about that? Okay, Chuck, So who who uses occams raiser? Obviously? Um, everyone who was throwing money down on the cock fight between Laurence and Einstein, we're using atoms razor. They all went with Einstein's because this is the simplest, right, Yeah, who else uses it? Well? I mean you have a great section in this article about skeptics. Uh, and I know over the years of this show, over the past ten years, we've had a lot of um minor scraps with the skeptic community. That's a pretty minor is that fair to say? Yeah, because I mean we have our skeptical side for sure. But there you know, when it comes to skepticism and skeptics, there's ah, it's it's sort of on a on a sliding scale. There's a range of how you might feel about certain things, and you very astutely, i think, point out that if you are a true skeptic, then you will not use Akam's razor, like I did earlier, as a tool to disprove something, right that you will only use it as a tool to consider different explanations. And that's there's a big difference there. There is so like like that whole idea of seeing a ghost on film, right, So there there's there's this example where somebody could say, Um, so you just explain something about light and refracting and something with the film, and um, there was moisture in the air. What isn't it just simpler to say no, that was a ghost exactly. And in that case, UM, if you're a skeptic, you would you would Um, you're you pull a little tough of your hair out, maybe um, just start scraping at your cheeks until you bleed. Uh. Ideally, what you would say is, um, I get what you're saying, but you're bringing something into this that we don't know exists, like we do no light exists. We do know it refracts off of vapor. We do know how this can be captured on film. So yes, that sounds very complicated. Um, but the the ghosts don't exist as far as we know, We can't sense them empirically. But I would keep my mind open to the idea that ghost could consumably exists. The fact that I just showed that this is reflect the reflection of light off of water vapor in this graveyard does not mean that your hypothesis about ghosts existing is wrong. It just means that's what's in this picture. Right. That's a true skeptic, right, because because things happen, and they and later on the more fantastical explanation could be true and has been true. Uh. And you point out very uh, very plainly here that there's a couple of problems with this, And to me, this kind of says it all, is that it's subjective. Like the whole notion of determining is this is the most simple explanation is completely subjective because the ghost explanation, one person might say, no, the ghost explanation is clearly the simplest because I can just say one word ghost, see there, uh, and then you can fire right back. Well, no, I can fire back two words um, photographic mishap, right, or maybe just mishap if they want to, like keep it completely equal. And that's the most simple. So it's completely subjective as to which one or anything that it's the most simple right exactly, And then again the the idea that you can use acoms razor to disprove something just by showing that that it's not the simplest explanation. That doesn't that's not correct, that's not right, And so scientists will use acoms razor and all sorts of different disciplines um like for example, if you're making an artificial neural network, right like a learning machine, you um, you might use decision trees, and you will use some sort of simple decision tree over a more complicated one that can get the same job done. That doesn't mean that it's necessarily the right one, but they're there are demonstrably good reasons for picking a simpler one over. It's less likely to break, it takes less time, it takes less energy to come to the computations. There are things that are valuable about it, but it doesn't mean that the other one is just wrong. And again, when you're using akams razors, say, if you're making a neural network, or you're pouring through a data set or something like that, or you're trying to interpret a big data set, you're you're making again like you're saying, not just a subjective judgment about what's simpler. But that's all there is to it. You're making a subjective judgment about what's simpler, not what's right. It's not saying what's right. And this is a recurring theme that you just have to know because there's so many people out there that use acams razor to disprove other people wells ideas, and that's just not at all what it was originally intended for. It's just a complete perversion of it, and it's just wrong and that's not how science works. So if you see somebody out there doing this, um, thump them in the forehead. Yeah. And boy, then when you get into theology, it gets really interesting because this is sort of a prime example of the simplest explanation from a believer's point of view, is very easy to say, No, the Big Bang is incredibly complex and complicated, and it's pretty clear that the easiest explanation here and the simplest thing is God created life in seven days, right, But that's also discounting the process that it took God to create earth, if that's what you believe, and just kind of bundle it up in a tidy package, say God created life. The Big Bang is super complicated, so and very coincidental. Um if you really look at it. So this is the simplest x nation. Akams razor proves that God exists. Right, and so that's been used time and time again by by creationists, right, or people who believe in ghosts, or people who um counter empiricism in a lot of voice. Right. Um. But on the other hand, you can you can find atheists who use akams razor to show that God does not exist, because their point is if the universe tends towards simplicity and God is perfect and simplicity is perfection, then if God exists in the universe would be a lot more simpler. There wouldn't be this big Bang thing that we have that happened it would you You would be right creationists, and the fact that you're wrong means that means that there is no God, which is just like, my head is starting to spin a little bit with this, but it's a good example of how you can use acams razor. Both sides can use acams razor to disprove the other person's point, which against shows how it's not meant to be used that way. Well, yeah, and then you point out to and talk about a heads inner like something like photosynthesis is a pretty complex mechanism and nature. Um, but I mean, who's to say that that isn't the simplest way to achieve food production and a plant maybe that is the simplest. Yeah, we have no way of knowing that there is a simpler model of the universe or photosynthesis or of a shark or anything like that, and that even something that does seem superfluous, we can't say that in the larger scheme of things that it's actually the simplest way to do that, right, So, like like a shark seems like men, maybe do you need that extra fin or something like that, or or does a cow really need eight stomachs? Or do we really need two kidneys? But what this what this point is saying, is that there's we don't have the information to look at everything on such a grand scheme of things to say no, if they're if humans only had one kidney, this other larger system would break down and this is actually the simplest way to do it, right, Or there's a cow with one stomach that we can compare it to, right, right, exactly, So this whole thing. This is the point, Chuck, where I reach this very glaring idea that Acams Razor or what Aristotle said, that that that simplicity is is perfection. That's all man made, that's human made. That's a human made concept. To value simplicity is human made. It is possible the universe complicated. You can come up with all sorts of examples of the universe being seemingly pretty complicated. Just the universe itself seems pretty complicated, frankly, right, So that doesn't necessarily mean that the universe tends towards simplicity. Um, it seems like humans value simplicity and the universe uses simplicity a lot. But that doesn't mean that simplicity is perfection or correctness. That's a human construct. Well yeah, but and like let's say, in terms of engineering, it's probably a decent model to think, Hey, the more complex the system is that I'm engineering, the more things that are to break. So we should probably try and make it as simple as possible. That still gets the job done. But that's not to say that it can be rudimentary, like you might need it might need to be a little bit complicated to run at its most efficient, you know, yeah, exactly, or art. I mean, that's a whole different kind of worms. You know, that's entirely subjective, like is uh. You might find one drummer that says um less is more. You just need to provide that basic backbeat and leave room. Uh, And then you Stewart Copeland comes in the room and and laughs and punches you in the face because you look like sting thumps here in the head, you know. So that's that's entirely subjective when it comes to art, like you know, you've been to a museum and seen a a twelve inch by twelve inch square painted red, and then you've also seen Jackson Pollock or Free to Carlo. So again, it's just a subjective as to simplicity and maybe I don't know, can you apply to art? Am I am I wrong? There? No, not necessarily. I think that's a that's a good point because it's still it's it's subjectively valuing something, whether it's complexity or whether it's simplicity. It's it doesn't mean it's right. That's the point, right that I think that your point is one staring right over the other. Yeah, I think that's my point. And then there's also plenty of circumstances where Akham's razor just doesn't help very much, like very famously um Ptolemy's idea of the um universe. The Earth is the center of the universe. Geocentric universe, I think, is what it's called, where the Earth is the center of the universe, the Sun, the Moon, and all the planets and all the stars revolve around Earth. Is known to be wrong now, but for a long time that's what everyone thought until the Copernican Revolution, where we realized that not a universe, but our solar system is Sun centered, and the Sun is at the center and the Earth is actually moving around it. Um. The thing is is, if you look at if you look at the explanations between the two, they are pretty close, and one is not necessarily less um simple than the other. And if you put them side by side ockhams Razer, it doesn't really help. You have to dig a little deeper and figure it out that I actually know this one's right based on these observations. We think this one's right, but it has nothing necessarily to do with complexity. And then on the other side of the equation, just because something is complex doesn't mean that it's wrong. So the next time somebody starts flailing some acams razor stuff at you, you tell them I'm gonna thump you. Do you want to be thumbed? Everybody me? Yeah, Well, because they're asking for it. Is it just a pretty mild act of violence? Yeah, you don't want to be too. You don't want to punch someone in the base. No. No, And plus I mean like you shouldn't. You shouldn't thump anybody anyway. I was totally kidding it. Okay, thanks for setting me up for that. One oh one other thing. A lot of people say that um OCAM's razor squashes free thought, So I think that does kind of tie in with your art thing, you know what I mean? Like, feel free to go be complex. There's nothing wrong with it, doesn't like not everything has to be funneled through this Ockham's razor thing and made simpler just to make it better. Well, Chuck, we made it through this one sort of. It's better than Jackhammers will tell you that I think you did well. I think you did as well. Man. That means that it was a good episode. If you want to learn more about Okam's Razor. You could read my UM socio article on the site how Stuff Works dot com just typing in the search bar. And since I said so, so it's time for listener mail. All right, I'm gonna call this North Korea Part two. We heard from a woman. Uh and in Australia we were corrected. Just starts with the nest there's no awe right. Woman in Australia named Clear Sutherland too actually had an interaction and away with North Korea when she was editor at Australian newspaper called uh little M big X. It's m X, but it's just X. Oh is it? No? I don't know. They don't say awe before Australia, so oh, I got you. Probably not the little land. Well, she's based in Elbourne, UM and they have additions in Melbourne, Sydney, in Brisbane. And she says during the London Olympics in our daily Metal tally graphic we listed North in South Korea as a naughty Korea and nice Korea. Uh. Just kind of a chekey thing, I guess, she said. We've been doing this for about a week when we received a call from a Wall Street Journal reporter based in Soul seeking comment about the fact that North Korea just issued an official condemnation of our paper and its editor. At first, our assumption was we were being punked, but he directed us to the official PR website of North Korea. Sure enough, there was a flowery diet tribe and communist English which misnamed their paper Metro by the Way, and called us sortid, bullying and petty thieves, declaring we would be cursed long and Olympic history. I think my favorite extract is this, She says. Editors of the paper were so incompetent as to charnish the reputation of the paper by themselves by producing the article like that. There is a saying a straw may show which way the wind blows, a single article may exhibit the level of the paper. Wow came down on her, she says. The Wall Street Journal described the official statement is most unusual, and we ended up making some minor international headlines because of it. We ran the statement in full with a story about our sudden entry into world affairs on the front page. The headline was North Korea fires missive. At the time, we thought it was equal parts ridiculous and funny. It happened today I'd probably try and arrange new identities for me and my staff. Anyway, Thanks from me and my dog for the show. Looking forward to seeing in Melbourne. That is from Claire Sutherland. Thanks Claire, that was a great story. Well you really want this one over, don't you sure? If you want to get in touch with me and Chuck with a great story, you can tweet to us. I'm at Josh, I'm Clark, Chuck's that movie Crush. We're both at s Y s K podcast. Chuck's on Facebook dot com slash Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and we're at Facebook dot com slash stuff. You should know. You can send us an email to Stuff Podcast, how stuff Works dot com and is always joining us at at home on the web. Stuff you no dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff Works dot com? M hm hm

Hey, everybody, tour announcement, it's just me. Chuck. Josh isn't here for this one. We had to get it out the door. So apologies for fifty of stuff you should know. But we have added two dates to uh the two thousand eighteen tour, and there may be another couple to come. You never know. But everybody, we asked Salt Lake City ins and Utahn's should we come there, and boy, we heard from you, so we're coming. It's that easy. Tuesday October, we are coming to Salt Lake City for an evening with stuff you should know at the Grand Theater and we are super excited. I'll tell you what. You guys really came through on the emails and social meds and let us know that we would see some love if we came to Salt Lake City, a city we've talked about often in the past. So we are a coming Tuesday, October twenty three, and we decided, hey, we're gonna be out there, we might as well add another city that we've never been to. So it is your lucky day, Phoenix eras Zona and dare I say, Tucson and in the Greater Phoenix area drive over to Phoenix and come see us on Wednesday October at the Van Buren. And this is also an evening with stuff you should know. I don't even know what that means, but it sounds a little more regal than normal. So come see us October Salt Lake City and Phoenix. Uh, you know what, I don't even know if tickets are on sale. I believe by the time this announcement goes up, tickets will be on sale, and you can go to the Van Buren website or to the Grand Theater website to get your ticket links. I will try and have them up very soon on s y s K live dot com, but I don't know if I'll get to that today, but look forward soon and we can't wait to see you, guys. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles Chuck Bryant, and there's guest producer Tristan over there, so it's stuff you should know. I don't know how these are going to release, but as you've noticed, Tristan weirdly grew out his mustache in the last hour. Again, he's quick, He's very fast. He can make it go in and out, in and out. Woooo what is that? It's like he's growing his mustache and it's sucking it back in, sucking it back in, you know, like a reverse Plato. Right. Do you remember that Plato set with the like a little meat grinder. No, there was one where like you could grow a mustache on I dude, I think I remember that. I would imagine if you could reverse it too. It was called the Plato Nightmare set. Yeah, is that your nightmare? Growing Plato mustache? Waking up like that? Yeah, I've had that dream about once a week for about thirty five years. Like all the rest of you is chuck, but just your mustaches Wallace and alm it. Yeah, dude. Yesterday, I h there was a bad smell. Emily and I were having a glass of wine at a wine bar and there was a bad smell nearby. I think it was a dumpster or something. And they were growing fresh herbs at this wine bar, and I rubbed a rosemary bush and then swiped it all over my mustache. Uh In. Emily's mind was blown. She was just like, oh my God, like I can't believe, like that's an actual use for facial hair. Yeah, I guess just to hold in that smell. It was like, well, you can wipe it on your upper lip. It's probably the same thing. Maybe the hair retains more essential oils. Which essential oils? Man, people are clamoring for that episode. Yeah, we should do that. We will eventually. It's been a big part of my life for two or twelve years now, essential oils. We'll talk about it someday, but not today. No, no, because Chuck's gonna stumble through a philosophy podcast. It's a yeah, I guess it is philosophy. It's the philosophy of knowledge. Epistemology is another way to put it. But specifically, Chuck, we're talking today about a little ditty you may have heard of before called acams razor, called the Gambler. Have you have you ever you've heard of ocums razor before? Right, Well, so much so that I thought for sure we had covered this, But um, I realized that we just talked about it quite a bit in the scientific methods. I'm not at all surprised because a lot of people say that the basis of science, which is how humans approach um nature in our universe and us and everything. Scientifically, the basis of that is ocams razor and if if acams razor sounds familiar but you can't quite place it, You've probably heard it as something like um, given two possible outcomes or explanations or whatever, the simplest version is probably the right one. Yeah, it's a pretty even that, in its simplicity is is beautiful. The mere statement itself is an example of its simplicity and how wonderful it can be just to think, like, yeah, you know what, let's get through all the gobbledegook. I think the easiest way to explain this, whether it's a a what do you call the orb and a photo Yeah, it's not. It's not your great grandfather coming to visit you on a different plane. It's really just an error with your photograph. Or it's a it's the flash um yeah, reflecting off like water vapor in the air. Or Kennedy probably acted alone. Kennedy he shot himself from afar. Yeah. I clearly meant to say Oswald acted alone, because that is a plus explanation, not this very convoluted deep um plot that goes that a hundred people were involved in to assassinate Kennedy. So we'll talk about all that, because what you're doing right now is has become pretty standard. You're using ocams razor to disprove other people's points. There's this is a total and complete misuse of ocams razors, not the original intention. The original intention had nothing to do with saying that's wrong. Is just a heuristic device, a guide, a rule of thumb that tells you that, because things tend to be more simple in the universe, if you if you're doing something, don't make it harder than it has to be. Don't add more to it than is needed to get the job done. And there's actually a couple of ways to put this, and both of them get attributed to William of Ockham, who will talk about in a second. But one is called he sounds like a baseball manager. But one is called the principle of plurality harder to say fast than you would think, and that is translated from the Latin plurality should not be positive without necessity. And the other is the principle of parsimony, which is it is pointless to do with more what is done with less. From what I understand, they are one and the same Oh really, I could not find anyone who could explain the difference. And I see them interchangeably, not just like on some dudes blog, but unlike you know, the the the Internet Encyclopedia Philosophy or the Stanford Encyclopedia Philosophy, like they don't seem to be different. Well, parsimony, it seems different to me because that specifically is like not using resources, not spending money if you don't have to. And that's SEMs different than plurality. Okay, well then then let's explore it. So plurality adding to something, doubling something, maybe just making it more than just the singular. He's saying plurality should not be positive without necessity, right, so I guess what he's saying. Then if they are different, then if you're if you're guessing at something, if you're trying to explain something, don't make it harder than it is, don't make it bigger than is absolutely necessary to explain its sense. Or and this is a really big point that we'll see in a minute. William of Ockham really was saying, don't don't add on to something beyond what you know to be true and correct, which a lot of people over time. And I think he actually maybe explicitly wasn't empirersist have said William of Ockham wasn't empirersist. He was saying that that you need to experience things through your senses to know that they are true. Yes, empirical evidence if I can look at it or smell it, or taste it or feel it. What's the fifth one? Uh, tickle it, tickle it. And then the sixth one, of course we know means Bruce Willis is really dead. See the ghost of it. Uh. Yeah, if there's no empirical evidence, if you cannot experience it with one of your senses, then um, it's it's poo pooed. So so it is so. And those two things, like you really especially modern science, especially science these days, you put them together. It's given two things. Go with the simpler explanation, and you don't don't believe anything that you can't sense one way or another through your senses empirically. Right, you put those together, you have the basis for modern science. And so the idea that that that things that are simpler are better, or the idea that the universe is simpler, Like when you start to think about it. It's all over the place, right, Like the the idea that the you universe is based on simpler being better is found everywhere, right, So, like there's things that things have fewer parts, things that require less energy, the encapsulation of larger ideas into smaller amounts of words or theories or whatever. All these things are very much prized by humanity. So it just kind of makes sense that acams razor is a sensible thing and that you could actually use it to uncover the mysteries of the universe. But again, that's not really necessarily the case, to tell you the truth. No, I mean, there's there's gonna be a lot of uh and and this stuff is kind of fun, just a lot of back and forth on Acam's razor throughout this whole thing, because there is no idea and that's kind of part of the whole jam of Bockham's razor, because there is no right or wrong here. You know, what's weird is right? A lot of people point to it though that it's this is right. I just proved you wrong, razor and that's just not true. And all right, should we take a break early? Okay? Yeah, I think we should take a break now because I need to get my head wrapped around this, and we'll come back getting the way back machine and visit Billy Ackum. Okay, so now Billy Ackum sounds like a recording star. Oh sure, like Billy Ocean. Yeah, get also my razor and get into my car, so that we should say the razor too. It's a philosophical term. It's the term of philosophy. The razor used to scrape away unnecessary stuff. So it's Acom's razor. So let's go back and me Billy Yakum shown. Yeah. And you wrote this by the way back in your in your article righting days uh, And you point out very astutely that this is from a time in our history of the world where you might not have had a surname. You may have been William of Ockham, which is the case here, which is in England. And he lived between about twelve eighty five and thirty nine, and he was a philosophical dude and a Franciscan monk. And he very much like you point out, took his valid poverty very seriously and lived a very meager, humble life. Yeah he did. He also expected the church to take the same vow of party, and he actually butted heads with the Church quite a bit, so much so that he ended up getting excommunicated, as we'll see. But he um, he was the real deal as far as like a true believer went. The weird thing about William of Akam was that he was also a genuinely independent thinker and a rationalist, which at the time rationalism and the church did not go hand in hand. They were there was really not much rationalism. So for an idea of the idea for this this upstart Franciscan monk to start questioning the ideas of the church. And not only that, but how the the leaders of the church conducted themselves and how much money they surrounded themselves with and how much power they had politically. This is it was a big deal, all right. Yeah. And he is not He did not invent this line of thought, um, as much as he's probably attributed to this to people that uh just know him from like a jeopardy board. He h. This is already a line of thought well established by this time in the medieval times, and he was just he kind of boiled it down to those two sentences that you were talking about. So in one could understand it, he could put it on a bumper sticker and a T shirt and sell it. Right. So it was Aristotle who was the guy who came up with this idea first, that that simplicity equals perfection, and perfection equal simplicity, said, the more perfect a nature is, the fewer means it requires for its operation. Right, So that makes sense. That speak to me. But then over time, in between Aristotle and William it kind of got expanded. So let me give you an example of that same thought from Robert gross Test who was an early scientist also a theologian I believe too. Here was his his version of it, That is better and more valuable, which requires fewer other circumstances being equal, For if one thing we're demonstrated from many and another thing from fewer equally known premises, clearly that is better, which is from fewer because it makes us no quickly, just as a universal demonstration is better than particular because it produces knowledge from fewer premises. Is that similarly in natural science, in moral science, and in metaphysics, the best is that which needs no premises, and that better that which needs the fewer other circumstances being equal. Boy, the ironies there are rich, right. So within less than a hundred years, William of Ockham comes along and he's just like, plurality should not be positive without necessity Robert, and Robert was like, well, yeah, I guess that's one way you could say it. So so I want to say something though, Um, before we keep going, Chuck actually found a correction of my own article that I missed before. What's that? It turns out that they think now that a another um theologian slash scientist from uh William of Ockham's era named John Dunn Scottis was the one who really encapsulated this this principle of plurality and principle of parsimony, and that it was a guy from the nineteenth century, William Rowan Hamilton's Irish mathematician, that he was the one who misattributed it to William a. Ackam. So is William Avakam just a uh and no nothing, no, no, His writings definitely included this stuff and he never took credit for this. But they think that that it was actually um John's done scott Is who encamped who encapsulated it the way that we tend to think of it now bumper stickers, but right, But William of Akam thought this way and he was a radical thinker and a rationalist, as we'll see. Right, And like you kind of teased out earlier, he did butt heads with the church over this. He wrote a lot about it, and the church was not into it, and Pope John the what is that twenty two? Um? He they kind of squared off on this, and of course the pope wins all battles, at least back then. Uh. And he was excommunicated and several of his his monk brothers, and I take that to mean not real. There's right, we're excommunicated. In thirty eight he went to Munich seeking refuge. He was protected there by Emperor Louis the fourth, and uh, Ultimately he went out because he started writing papers about Pope John the twenty two saying he's a heretic, and people ultimately believed him. Right. He he definitely made some pretty convincing points. And he also again like if you're saying I took avour poverty, the church really should too. And the church isn't poverty stricken and you are. That gives you a little more credibility from the outside as well. So there there's some reasons why William of Bakum is this theologian, a devout Franciscan monk, is looked upon as one of the fathers of western um science like the foundation of Western science right, or science in general um. And the reason why is he argued against the prevailing ideas at the time, which is called medieval synthesis. And this is very much championed by Thomas Aquinas, who's a famous theologian. I believe he was a saint, and one of the reasons he was canonized was because of this. Thinking about this, but the whole medieval synthesis thing was that God was first and foremost everything. Right, you were, you were a member of the church, just as much as you were a member of your country, a citizen of your country. Um. All human knowledge came from God, and Thomas Aquinas he was it wasn't just like the end. Thomas Aquinas used philosophy to prove that sentiment that all human knowledge came from God, and here is how. And basically it took the idea of cause and effect and said that you can trace every effect back to a cause, back to another effect back to another cause. But ultimately you were going to end up on God, and that all of our conceptions of everything arose from God's conception, and that God will that we understand things this way, which means that this is the perfect way to understand it, which means it's right right. So that is not what William Wacam thought. He was again a rationalist who said, um, no, we tend to think things or things because that is that arises in the human mind from cognition, not from God. And this dude was not a heretic. He believed that you didn't apply rationalism to God, that God required faith, and rationalism stood on its own, it was a different thing, and you couldn't know God through your senses. God was elsewhere. Leave God out of this. And the fact that he was able to really successfully lay like a philosophical groundwork for this, a rational groundwork for it. It's one thing today to be like I'm a secular humanist. You know, I'm rational. Forget the church that's today. This is at a time when this guy is saying this and the Church has the power to burn you at the stake. Like he was. He was a stand up rational thing, right, which kind of makes him a hero of rationality today. But don't. And this is another perfect example of how Akam's razor gets confused. Akam himself gets confused too. He's a hero of science. But it was also one of the more devout human beings walking the earth at the time. It was a monk for basically his whole life, and also had a metal band called Medieval Synthesis. Oh that is a good name, isn't it. So he was he was just a conundrum. Yeah, he was a conundrum for sure. And again he got excommunicated. He had to escape by horse, stolen horse. I mean, he was not very monk like. No, But all right, So we were talking earlier about empirical evidence, um and how that kind of fits in here, and the fact that if you can't you know, like you you know the sky is blue because you look up and you see it's blue. You you know a bird makes a whistle because you can hear the bird make a whistle. So uh, it's very easy to sort of use that um and say sure, but if you don't, if you can't see it or hear it empirically or any of the senses experience it. Uh, it's very easy to poopoo. And you give a great example here, um with Lawrence and Einstein, and kind of which one would win out. So both of these guys, both physicists, UM, Einstein obviously more popular. We we'll see for a very important reason. They both had the conclusion mathematically that with the space time continuum, the closer we get to moving at the speed of light, the more we slow down, which is hard to wrap your head around. So Lawrence comes out and says, explains it away because of changes that take place in the ether, which he might as well have said, a bit of magic happens. Uh, Einstein didn't. And so the one we talked about today is Einstein and not Lawrence. That explanation of Einstein was more rooted in science, and he didn't say something wacky like the ether, which is something empirically you can't see or smell or taste. So Einstein, you know, he won that great battle. Yeah, he very famously said, he goes, I don't know what's what, but I know it ain't got nothing to do with no ether. And one day my brain's gonna end up in a jar and some guy's garage in New Jersey, right, and everybody will love that picture of me with my tongue sticking out, and Walter math that will play me in a romantic comedy. So Lawrence violated that principle of plurality, right, it added something to this that required an additional basically like a leap of faith. There was no empirical evidence that there was such a thing as the ether. And he said, did I say ether? And I didn't mean ether? And every went no, no, no, it's too lady. And he's still I mean, he's a respected he's a respected physicist. Still, it's not like he was some crackpot or anything like that, because if you put his equations in Einstein's equations side by side, they came to the same conclusions. It was just explaining how Lawrence seems to have misstepped, right, But he was obviously at least as brilliant as Einstein. When it comes to that, he's just a little nuts apparently. So, so he violates the principle of plurality. And now we understand relativity rather than Lawrence's manic ravings. Yeah, and I don't believe we mentioned there's a word for that. If you can't prove it empirically, it doesn't exist. It's called positivism. Yes, positivism isn't about having a good attitude, right, and so this is and this also happened during Einstein's working days too. There was a guy named Ernest Mock, and Ernest Mock was so Ernest Mock, thank you. That's that's way better than Ernest Ernst Mock. Um. He was so nuts on empiricism. He was. It was an early I think he was a physicist, if not a mathematician, one of the two. And he he basically said, like, molecules don't exist. All this whole bubble over molecules and atoms and all this stuff, you're all crazy. We can't see him. They don't exist. So there's a there's this kind of ironic twist that came from Einstein's working career where he actually um he beat Lorenz, his rival to this theory, through this through Ockham's razor. But he also disproved this idea of um that Earnst Mock, this thing about only believing what you can sense with your your senses, this kind of other part of Ockham's Razor, and a subsequent paper that came a few years later that showed that molecules do exist. So the idea that that ocams razor can be used both ways is something that just keeps coming up again and again and again, and we'll we'll talk about how after a break. How about that? Okay, Chuck, So who who uses occams raiser? Obviously? Um, everyone who was throwing money down on the cock fight between Laurence and Einstein, we're using atoms razor. They all went with Einstein's because this is the simplest, right, Yeah, who else uses it? Well? I mean you have a great section in this article about skeptics. Uh, and I know over the years of this show, over the past ten years, we've had a lot of um minor scraps with the skeptic community. That's a pretty minor is that fair to say? Yeah, because I mean we have our skeptical side for sure. But there you know, when it comes to skepticism and skeptics, there's ah, it's it's sort of on a on a sliding scale. There's a range of how you might feel about certain things, and you very astutely, i think, point out that if you are a true skeptic, then you will not use Akam's razor, like I did earlier, as a tool to disprove something, right that you will only use it as a tool to consider different explanations. And that's there's a big difference there. There is so like like that whole idea of seeing a ghost on film, right, So there there's there's this example where somebody could say, Um, so you just explain something about light and refracting and something with the film, and um, there was moisture in the air. What isn't it just simpler to say no, that was a ghost exactly. And in that case, UM, if you're a skeptic, you would you would Um, you're you pull a little tough of your hair out, maybe um, just start scraping at your cheeks until you bleed. Uh. Ideally, what you would say is, um, I get what you're saying, but you're bringing something into this that we don't know exists, like we do no light exists. We do know it refracts off of vapor. We do know how this can be captured on film. So yes, that sounds very complicated. Um, but the the ghosts don't exist as far as we know, We can't sense them empirically. But I would keep my mind open to the idea that ghost could consumably exists. The fact that I just showed that this is reflect the reflection of light off of water vapor in this graveyard does not mean that your hypothesis about ghosts existing is wrong. It just means that's what's in this picture. Right. That's a true skeptic, right, because because things happen, and they and later on the more fantastical explanation could be true and has been true. Uh. And you point out very uh, very plainly here that there's a couple of problems with this, And to me, this kind of says it all, is that it's subjective. Like the whole notion of determining is this is the most simple explanation is completely subjective because the ghost explanation, one person might say, no, the ghost explanation is clearly the simplest because I can just say one word ghost, see there, uh, and then you can fire right back. Well, no, I can fire back two words um, photographic mishap, right, or maybe just mishap if they want to, like keep it completely equal. And that's the most simple. So it's completely subjective as to which one or anything that it's the most simple right exactly, And then again the the idea that you can use acoms razor to disprove something just by showing that that it's not the simplest explanation. That doesn't that's not correct, that's not right, And so scientists will use acoms razor and all sorts of different disciplines um like for example, if you're making an artificial neural network, right like a learning machine, you um, you might use decision trees, and you will use some sort of simple decision tree over a more complicated one that can get the same job done. That doesn't mean that it's necessarily the right one, but they're there are demonstrably good reasons for picking a simpler one over. It's less likely to break, it takes less time, it takes less energy to come to the computations. There are things that are valuable about it, but it doesn't mean that the other one is just wrong. And again, when you're using akams razors, say, if you're making a neural network, or you're pouring through a data set or something like that, or you're trying to interpret a big data set, you're you're making again like you're saying, not just a subjective judgment about what's simpler. But that's all there is to it. You're making a subjective judgment about what's simpler, not what's right. It's not saying what's right. And this is a recurring theme that you just have to know because there's so many people out there that use acams razor to disprove other people wells ideas, and that's just not at all what it was originally intended for. It's just a complete perversion of it, and it's just wrong and that's not how science works. So if you see somebody out there doing this, um, thump them in the forehead. Yeah. And boy, then when you get into theology, it gets really interesting because this is sort of a prime example of the simplest explanation from a believer's point of view, is very easy to say, No, the Big Bang is incredibly complex and complicated, and it's pretty clear that the easiest explanation here and the simplest thing is God created life in seven days, right, But that's also discounting the process that it took God to create earth, if that's what you believe, and just kind of bundle it up in a tidy package, say God created life. The Big Bang is super complicated, so and very coincidental. Um if you really look at it. So this is the simplest x nation. Akams razor proves that God exists. Right, and so that's been used time and time again by by creationists, right, or people who believe in ghosts, or people who um counter empiricism in a lot of voice. Right. Um. But on the other hand, you can you can find atheists who use akams razor to show that God does not exist, because their point is if the universe tends towards simplicity and God is perfect and simplicity is perfection, then if God exists in the universe would be a lot more simpler. There wouldn't be this big Bang thing that we have that happened it would you You would be right creationists, and the fact that you're wrong means that means that there is no God, which is just like, my head is starting to spin a little bit with this, but it's a good example of how you can use acams razor. Both sides can use acams razor to disprove the other person's point, which against shows how it's not meant to be used that way. Well, yeah, and then you point out to and talk about a heads inner like something like photosynthesis is a pretty complex mechanism and nature. Um, but I mean, who's to say that that isn't the simplest way to achieve food production and a plant maybe that is the simplest. Yeah, we have no way of knowing that there is a simpler model of the universe or photosynthesis or of a shark or anything like that, and that even something that does seem superfluous, we can't say that in the larger scheme of things that it's actually the simplest way to do that, right, So, like like a shark seems like men, maybe do you need that extra fin or something like that, or or does a cow really need eight stomachs? Or do we really need two kidneys? But what this what this point is saying, is that there's we don't have the information to look at everything on such a grand scheme of things to say no, if they're if humans only had one kidney, this other larger system would break down and this is actually the simplest way to do it, right, Or there's a cow with one stomach that we can compare it to, right, right, exactly, So this whole thing. This is the point, Chuck, where I reach this very glaring idea that Acams Razor or what Aristotle said, that that that simplicity is is perfection. That's all man made, that's human made. That's a human made concept. To value simplicity is human made. It is possible the universe complicated. You can come up with all sorts of examples of the universe being seemingly pretty complicated. Just the universe itself seems pretty complicated, frankly, right, So that doesn't necessarily mean that the universe tends towards simplicity. Um, it seems like humans value simplicity and the universe uses simplicity a lot. But that doesn't mean that simplicity is perfection or correctness. That's a human construct. Well yeah, but and like let's say, in terms of engineering, it's probably a decent model to think, Hey, the more complex the system is that I'm engineering, the more things that are to break. So we should probably try and make it as simple as possible. That still gets the job done. But that's not to say that it can be rudimentary, like you might need it might need to be a little bit complicated to run at its most efficient, you know, yeah, exactly, or art. I mean, that's a whole different kind of worms. You know, that's entirely subjective, like is uh. You might find one drummer that says um less is more. You just need to provide that basic backbeat and leave room. Uh, And then you Stewart Copeland comes in the room and and laughs and punches you in the face because you look like sting thumps here in the head, you know. So that's that's entirely subjective when it comes to art, like you know, you've been to a museum and seen a a twelve inch by twelve inch square painted red, and then you've also seen Jackson Pollock or Free to Carlo. So again, it's just a subjective as to simplicity and maybe I don't know, can you apply to art? Am I am I wrong? There? No, not necessarily. I think that's a that's a good point because it's still it's it's subjectively valuing something, whether it's complexity or whether it's simplicity. It's it doesn't mean it's right. That's the point, right that I think that your point is one staring right over the other. Yeah, I think that's my point. And then there's also plenty of circumstances where Akham's razor just doesn't help very much, like very famously um Ptolemy's idea of the um universe. The Earth is the center of the universe. Geocentric universe, I think, is what it's called, where the Earth is the center of the universe, the Sun, the Moon, and all the planets and all the stars revolve around Earth. Is known to be wrong now, but for a long time that's what everyone thought until the Copernican Revolution, where we realized that not a universe, but our solar system is Sun centered, and the Sun is at the center and the Earth is actually moving around it. Um. The thing is is, if you look at if you look at the explanations between the two, they are pretty close, and one is not necessarily less um simple than the other. And if you put them side by side ockhams Razer, it doesn't really help. You have to dig a little deeper and figure it out that I actually know this one's right based on these observations. We think this one's right, but it has nothing necessarily to do with complexity. And then on the other side of the equation, just because something is complex doesn't mean that it's wrong. So the next time somebody starts flailing some acams razor stuff at you, you tell them I'm gonna thump you. Do you want to be thumbed? Everybody me? Yeah, Well, because they're asking for it. Is it just a pretty mild act of violence? Yeah, you don't want to be too. You don't want to punch someone in the base. No. No, And plus I mean like you shouldn't. You shouldn't thump anybody anyway. I was totally kidding it. Okay, thanks for setting me up for that. One oh one other thing. A lot of people say that um OCAM's razor squashes free thought, So I think that does kind of tie in with your art thing, you know what I mean? Like, feel free to go be complex. There's nothing wrong with it, doesn't like not everything has to be funneled through this Ockham's razor thing and made simpler just to make it better. Well, Chuck, we made it through this one sort of. It's better than Jackhammers will tell you that I think you did well. I think you did as well. Man. That means that it was a good episode. If you want to learn more about Okam's Razor. You could read my UM socio article on the site how Stuff Works dot com just typing in the search bar. And since I said so, so it's time for listener mail. All right, I'm gonna call this North Korea Part two. We heard from a woman. Uh and in Australia we were corrected. Just starts with the nest there's no awe right. Woman in Australia named Clear Sutherland too actually had an interaction and away with North Korea when she was editor at Australian newspaper called uh little M big X. It's m X, but it's just X. Oh is it? No? I don't know. They don't say awe before Australia, so oh, I got you. Probably not the little land. Well, she's based in Elbourne, UM and they have additions in Melbourne, Sydney, in Brisbane. And she says during the London Olympics in our daily Metal tally graphic we listed North in South Korea as a naughty Korea and nice Korea. Uh. Just kind of a chekey thing, I guess, she said. We've been doing this for about a week when we received a call from a Wall Street Journal reporter based in Soul seeking comment about the fact that North Korea just issued an official condemnation of our paper and its editor. At first, our assumption was we were being punked, but he directed us to the official PR website of North Korea. Sure enough, there was a flowery diet tribe and communist English which misnamed their paper Metro by the Way, and called us sortid, bullying and petty thieves, declaring we would be cursed long and Olympic history. I think my favorite extract is this, She says. Editors of the paper were so incompetent as to charnish the reputation of the paper by themselves by producing the article like that. There is a saying a straw may show which way the wind blows, a single article may exhibit the level of the paper. Wow came down on her, she says. The Wall Street Journal described the official statement is most unusual, and we ended up making some minor international headlines because of it. We ran the statement in full with a story about our sudden entry into world affairs on the front page. The headline was North Korea fires missive. At the time, we thought it was equal parts ridiculous and funny. It happened today I'd probably try and arrange new identities for me and my staff. Anyway, Thanks from me and my dog for the show. Looking forward to seeing in Melbourne. That is from Claire Sutherland. Thanks Claire, that was a great story. Well you really want this one over, don't you sure? If you want to get in touch with me and Chuck with a great story, you can tweet to us. I'm at Josh, I'm Clark, Chuck's that movie Crush. We're both at s Y s K podcast. Chuck's on Facebook dot com slash Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and we're at Facebook dot com slash stuff. You should know. You can send us an email to Stuff Podcast, how stuff Works dot com and is always joining us at at home on the web. Stuff you no dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff Works dot com? M hm hm