I recently got into a conversation wherein the other party brought up the principle of Ockham’s Razor as one of their arguments. If you’re not familiar with it, it is usually stated as:

Of two equivalent theories or explanations, all other things being equal, the simpler one is to be preferred.

People try to apply this principle all over the place, and it very much annoys me. Especially when it is applied to fields of human endeavor such as current affairs and history. Things are rarely, if ever, simple when it comes to people and the wonderfully wild and wacky things that we do.

I have two examples demonstrating why I think this is a poor choice of models to apply to human behavior. First, most people when asked what the cause(s) of the American Civil War was, they will reply, “Slavery!” While slavery may be the simplest explanation, according to Ockham’s Razor, it is not complete by any means. You need to take into account the subsidiary elements which brought slavery into the forefront of memory later in history. You need to look at the slow erosion of states’ rights, and strict vs. loose constructionism of the Constitution. Not to mention the North’s economic treatment of the Southern states as though they were a subjected colony. Just because its simpler and more popular to say “Slavery!” and ignore everything else does not make it right.

Another modern example: when asked “Why did we invade Iraq?” Most people will say something like, “Because of 9/11, silly!” or “Because of those pesky terrorists!” These are the simplest explanations. But not one of them is true all by itself (or true at all, arguably). There are actually a whole range of factors which brought our current situation into being. Slavery is just the soundbite explanation which was engineered so that people, through fear, would rubber-stamp pre-existing goals.

I think the big danger of trying to apply Ockham’s Razor to everything is that you’re going to thereby shut out anything which is not simple. And people are not simple, especially when people get together to form groups with agendas. With Ockham’s Razor as your guide, you’re choosing to follow the mental path of least resistance, rather than to take a hard in-depth look at what’s really happening and why. And I think this is exactly what people in power want out of their subjects. They want people to just sit back and accept the simple explanations for everything which they are handed.