Libertarian commentator Dave Rubin appeared on Newsmax Friday night and offered a definition of Occam’s razor that was actually Murphy’s Law.
Host John Bachman had been musing as to whether the Biden administration’s shortcomings (both real and imagined) are the product of incompetence or whether it’s part of a hidden strategy with ulterior motives. He brought on Rubin to discuss.
“Now Dave, I’m always struggling here with something called the Hanlin, uh, razor, Hanlon’s razor as well,” said Bachman. “Which says you don’t attribute to malice what can be chalked up to incompetence, but then we had this whole other thing going on here. And I don’t know where to come down on this, so enlighten me, please.”
“Well John,” said Rubin confidently. “Let me give you another razor, Occam’s razor: if something can go wrong, it will. And that basically is the tagline for this administration.”
That is not Occam’s razor, but Murphy’s Law.
Occam’s razor is often mischaracterized as something along the lines of, “the simplest explanation is (usually) the correct one.”
In reality, the razor’s author actually said, “It is futile to do with more what can be done with fewer.”
A more accurate summation would be to say that when forming a hypothesis, making fewer assumptions is preferable.
Not surprisingly,
You can watch above, via Newsmax.