[FRIAM] ockham's razor losing its edge?

[steve smith]

On 1/31/25 1:20 PM, glen wrote:
> So even though you understand my basic point of [ab]use and the 
> tolerance of error or tolerance of ambiguity, I'm not hearing any 
> recognition of schematic systems in your responses. It's fine, of 
> course. It would be reasonable to take the absence of my language in 
> your responses as an implicit rejection of the game I'm trying to 
> define. In fact, I kinda hope that's the case because I enjoy that 
> kind of subtle game play. But just in case it's not ...
>
> The in general, observation bias, and in specific, schematic bias, I'm 
> pointing to cf. multiverse analysis (pluralism) versus either 
> parsimony or complicatedness (monism) won't be understood without 
> understanding what it means to be schematic in one's "calibration". In 
> perhaps obsolete terminology, it amounts to requirements analysis with 
> predicates like "must have" versus "nice to have" versus "don't care", 
> etc. 

The easy answer is that I'm probably just entirely over my head in this 
conversation.

I was focused (perhaps) mostly on your original opening line about 
parsimony being a red herring.  If I doubled down on the miter saw 
calibrationexample, it was because I thought you were willfully 
misunderstanding or ignoring the specifics of the example.   If I can 
recast it into "the schematic" (scare quotes to acknowledge I may be 
misunderstanding the concept in some fundamental way) then the issue 
might be to reframe the problem from "cutting at a specific angle" to 
"cutting two pieces at complementary angles which sum to the orthogonal 
to support a specific type of joinery within a specific range of 
constructions where orthogonality has specific value"?

Attempting to understand you more better, I will focus here on what you 
call the "schematic".  If I understand you correctly, my EC registration 
example *was* schematic?  I'm lost when you equate (relate?) 
"complicatedness" to monism?  In this case monism as a single unified 
theory with plurality being it's complement or opposite.  I am used to 
this list arguing monism vs dualism (without my own dog in the fight) so 
probably didn't appreciate the nuance there.   In fact I think my lack 
of a dog in the monist/dualist fight is that (I think) I'm pretty 
pluralist at my core.   But maybe my words or behaviour say otherwise.