>> There are an infinite number of hypotheses that don't contain a third person
that are more complex than the hypothesis that there was a third person.
Yes! You're right, and I'm very excited now because you seem to understand how
it works.
Note that all those hypotheses that you bring up also "multiply entities beyond
necessity" - so they are "more complex" than any hypotheses that don't, and we
don't need to examine them, we can just prune them out without even having to
state them.
So to correct what I've been saying above that was indeed too general, "any
hypothesis that does not assume there was something else in the car is simpler
than any hypothesis that assumes there was something else in the car"
("something else" meaning "something besides what was actually found in the
car"). Please correct me again if you think I'm still wrong.
I think we're getting to something we can agree on now, yes?
Yes, but you haven't accepted the central premise of all my posts yet, which is that entities should only not be multiplied "without necessity."
If the initial known facts of a story aren't sufficient to describe an event (a baby in a tree, a car doing something it never has before) then the actual cause must involve additional entities, whether a person or a solar flare.
>> Yes, but you haven't accepted the central premise of all my posts yet, which is
that entities should only not be multiplied "without necessity."
This is not the central premise of all your posts. For most of our interaction
the central premise of your posts was that I'm misunderstanding the intended use of
Occam's Razor. In recent posts you concluded that the reason I misunderstand it
is that I don't take into account the "necessity" part of the Razor's original
formulation.
Yet, I have constantly said that we don't need to assume that there is a third
person in the car because the two people we already know were in the car suffice
to explain the crash and that therefore assuming a third person in the car is
multiplying entities beyond necessity.
In fact, I keep repeating the "beyond necessity" part like a broken record, so
how come you're now insisting that I'm missing that particular point?
I think what you are saying is that you "need" to assume a third person in the
car, otherwise you can't explain what happened. Well, that is a "need" in the
same way that "I don't have an iPhone, therefore I need to get one" is a "need".
It's not so much a "need" as a "want". You can't think of anything better and
you want to explain what happenned, so you make up some entity that must be
responsible for what happened. So you have an explanation you're happy with and
your "need" for an explanation you're happy with is satisfied.
However, that's still "multiplying entities beyond necessity" because you may
"need" an explanation, but you don't need a third person in the car to explain the
crash.
Yes! You're right, and I'm very excited now because you seem to understand how it works.
Note that all those hypotheses that you bring up also "multiply entities beyond necessity" - so they are "more complex" than any hypotheses that don't, and we don't need to examine them, we can just prune them out without even having to state them.
So to correct what I've been saying above that was indeed too general, "any hypothesis that does not assume there was something else in the car is simpler than any hypothesis that assumes there was something else in the car" ("something else" meaning "something besides what was actually found in the car"). Please correct me again if you think I'm still wrong.
I think we're getting to something we can agree on now, yes?