My Thoughts on Science (& a Bit on Religion, too)
I always have such a tough time explaining how I think to other people. No one ever seems to be able to follow my train of thought no matter how hard I try to explain myself, and I consistently end up thinking that maybe there's some part of me that is crazy in a way that is obvious to others but is completely invisible to me
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After much thought, I think that the paragraph you wrote does contradict what I said in this entry, and I further think that I now agree with you.
In your 'second situation', you are right to say that there is no reason to call one purely simpler than another. I did not at first recognize this, but after much thought, it almost feels obvious. Thank you for pointing this out to me.
But when it comes to your 'first situation', I think I might now go even further. I think I was a bit naive even in just using the words 'simple' and 'complex' as I did. Previously, I was thinking that using these words could be unambiguous: a simple thing is a thing that requires less concepts to explain, while a complex thing requires more levels of nested concepts to comprehend. But after much thought, I now think that I was missing the fundamental human bias on even this description.
You say a complex theory can have everything a simpler one has, plus more. But, after much thought, I think that this, too, is a human bias.
Say, for example, that the Simple Theory consists of X and Y, while the Complex Theory consists of X, Y, and Z. Put this way, it seems rather obvious why one might be called simpler, and the other more complex. Yet, upon reflection, this is only because of how we view the constituent parts of the theories. If the entire world consisted of W, X, Y, and Z, then we might define the simple theory as -W&-Z (not W & not Z), while the complex theory is just -W.
As a result, I think it may be possible that I need to reevaluate my views on this aspect of scientific thought.
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