Perhaps you’ve heard Occam’s Razor paraphrased as “The Simplest Explanation Is Usually The Correct One”. But that’s blatantly wrong.
Occam’s Razor is actually translated as “Among competing hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected.” Stated this way it’s meaning is very different.
I describe the difference as ‘elegance’ vs ‘simplicity’.
If you just look at the Earth’s horizon the simplest conclusion is that the world is flat. The horizon circles around us in all directions and joins up with itself… so it must be a straight line. Distance makes far away things look smaller so that’s why we can only see stuff nearer to us.
But with more careful study, testing those assumptions, even the Flat Earth believers keep proving that far away things actually do disappear below the horizon, long before they’re too far away to be clearly seen, even with the naked eye. And it happens in all directions!
As you add more and more truths (in place of assumptions), the most elegant hypothesis is that the Earth must in fact be a spheroid.
And please stop saying the Earth is ’round’ — a pizza is both flat AND round, but it is quite decidedly not a spheroid…. unless, perhaps, you dropped it.
Since the 1600’s we have been slowly learning that the universe is very counter-intuitive to humans. Most of what’s real is not immediately apparent to us, and even that which we do see is easily misunderstood. Humans are extremely poor observers, prone to leap to false conclusions and ripe with confirmation biases.
In my opinion, one of our largest shortcomings is thinking that we can see and understand what’s right in front of us. If that was actually true, there would be no such thing as optical illusions or magic tricks. Instead of accepting that we’re easily fooled, we’ve been prone to believe in magical thinking. It’s (at first) easier to believe that magic exists (aka aliens, supernatural, etc.) than to accept that you’re just plain gullible.
The truly remarkable thing is that when we get past that initial lack of honest humility and start finding out more about what’s really going on in the universe, it’s a whole lot stranger than anything we’d imagined. It’s magical in a completely different way! But I digress…
It’s only after “rooting out” our assumptions that we have enough information to start drawing sensible conclusions — at which time the correct explanation will almost always be the one that fits the facts in the most elegant way.
So what do I mean by elegant? Let’s consider one of the best known: E=MC²
This is a deceptively elegant equation that accurately describes everything we know about the universe that is larger than an atom. Yet when you apply this deceptively simple equation to thermodynamics or physics (etc) you start to see how incredibly sophisticated and elegant it really is:
Examples of equations derived from E=MC²
(in the form MC²/E=0) Source: www.sciencedirect.com
E=MC² is not ‘simple’, quite the opposite. It’s an elegant expression that accurately describes a complicated truth that is far beyond our perception. And in that elegance there is a pleasing, satisfying aesthetic.
When you get it right you can experience that ‘elegant’ aesthetic the same way you experience a piece of amazing art or wonderful music. It’s like that ‘aha’ moment when everything falls into place and you suddenly know that you really, truly ‘get it’.
If you’re a nerd/geek like me, anyway.