“Occam’s Razor”
“Simplest solution tends to be the right one”
One of the things that this show was established to combat was how politicians and media personalities use the confirmation bias to justify a theory or a belief that they have. What this means is that they only want you to look at the evidence that validates the view point or conclusion that they want you to have and often shut down their guests when they attempt to present alternative evidence.
For example, Alex Jones was on Michael Savage last week talking about the conspiracy theory about how the liberal media elite are trying to silence him. He did a masterful job of explaining his conspiracy theory and gave all kinds of explanations as to why it is a conspiracy theory. He went into great detail about telling random things that happened to explain his theory. But the only problem is that he only presents one hypothesis and only presented evidence that supports his belief. I was screaming at my phone saying why doesn’t savage bring up the fact that he was warned several times to tone down his rhetoric and given several other warnings. Why is this important? Because if it was a conspiracy theory, why would they give him so many warnings? Wouldn’t they have just cut him off without giving him a chance to clean up what they didn’t like?
This is where Occam’s Razor comes in. Alex Jones has to present 5-10 coincidental or anecdotal pieces of evidence to make his hypothesis work. On the other hand, I have one piece of evidence that shows he was warned and decided to keep pushing the envelope anyways and got booted. It’s like my daughter picking up something and keep trying to pick it up after we said no a million times and then her getting angry at us for telling her to go to her room. Sometimes the simplest solution tends to be the most right one…which one seems the most simple explanation?
Another example is an article on Infowars about how measles vaccinations are a racket perpetrated by the pharmaceutical industries and are hiding the truth that vaccinated mothers will pass that on to their children. He goes into a long explanation that begins with a story bouta little known scientist in 1939 and weaves a long tale that finally attempts to connect all of those dots together to prove his point. (Side note: If someone tries to explain something and begins by telling a story about something that happened 100 years prior you should be weary). Or we can look at one piece of evidence that shows a near 1:1 correlation in America and Europe where anti-vaccination pockets of parents (people who don’t vaccinate their children) are getting measles and mumps all of a sudden where it never has been before. Once again, Occam’s Razor…which is easier to believe? 17 degrees of separation of evidence to prove a theory or one piece of information that disputes it clearly?
This is what we are up against and we must give people the ability to think again. No spin…no confirmation bias…just simply looking at a problem from a 360 degree viewpoint and letting people make a decision based on ALL the available data…not just the data the supports what you want to believe.
