Get Closer Shaves With Occam Brand Razors

Recently a Facebook friend linked The Huffington Post's recap of The Boston Globe article in which Tagg Romney stated that his father "wanted to be president less than anyone I've met in my life." Immediately one of her friends piled on with the statement, "Just about what I'd expect from The Huffington Post."  When I pointed out that the quote was from Tagg Romney, the gentleman responded, "yeah, if you believe HuffPo."

In this guy's world The Huffington Post isn't a content aggregator, but a publisher of malicious fiction that somehow manages to cite The Boston Globe, attribute a bunch of quotes to a living person, and escape without consequence.

Why would they do such a thing?  Well, our friend had an answer for that, too.  On second glance he agreed that The Boston Globe indeed published the original article but "there's obviously more to the story, and we'll never know what."

Yes, yes.  Obviously what's behind all of this is a far-reaching conspiracy by the media to defame Mitt Romney by depicting him as "a very private person who loves his family deeply and wants to be with them, but he has deep faith in God and he loves his country, but he doesn’t love the attention." That'll show him.

Or, you know, Mitt is a private person who loves his country but doesn't love the attention brought by a presidential campaign.

This brings us to Occam's razor, or the law of succintness.  Occam's razor states that among competing hypotheses, the one that makes the fewest assumptions should be selected.  A shorter but less precise definition:  The simplest answer is usually the right one.

Occam's razor is an incredibly useful tool for problem solving.  Take a lamp that won't light up, for example.  Do you start with the wiring?  The circuit breakers?  Do you call the power company?  No, you change the bulb, the simplest answer, and virtually every time you're right.

This same line of reasoning cuts through the inordinate amount of noise on talk radio, cable news, and the intergooglewebtubes.  Ready to give it a try?  Here are some practice questions:

1) KISS's Gene Simmons has a long tongue because:

A) It was surgically altered

B) He has a long tongue

2) The Antarctic ice sheet is melting because:

A) It isn't.  That's a conspiracy between climatologists and the government.

B) Water changes from a solid to a liquid as it warms

3) President Obama teared up after Sandy Hook because:

A) It was an all an act to get your guns

B) Kindergarteners were murdered

4) Retailers choose "Happy Holidays" over "Merry Christmas" because:

A) It's a war on Christmas!

B) They want to appeal to as many shoppers as possible

5) Justin Bieber is wildly popular because:

A)

B)

C) There are just some things that cannot be explained.

It's true - sometimes Occam's razor breaks down.  Occasionally our government does bizarre things like exchange arms for hostages or arm Mexican drug gangs, and sometimes it's the lamp's wiring rather than the  light bulb.  But the overwhelming majority of the time the simplest answer is the right one, so let's cut through the crazy and start making sense.