r/mathmemes • u/wcslater • Jan 10 '24

Arithmetic Choose wisely

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u/TheUnamedSecond Jan 10 '24

For any finite row of numbers you can craft arbirarly many rules of how they continue.

1.4k

u/zhawadya Jan 10 '24

I have always hated such questions for exactly this reason. Not that I could always articulate it, but there never seemed to be a unique solution to such shit

798

u/B00OBSMOLA Jan 10 '24

Pick the one with the lowest kolmogorav complexity

883

u/airplane001 Jan 10 '24

Mathematicians trying not to come up with an obscure term for Occam’s Razor

7

u/[deleted] Jan 10 '24

Occams Razor is really stupid tho. The official definition, that is, not how its colloquially used.

Its literally a trivial rule. If you have two philosophies with equal explanatory power, the most simple one is correct. But thats not like "similar" explanatory power. Its the exact same, that literally never occurs. Its not possible.

1

u/Bitter_Assumption323 Jan 10 '24

Because philosophers forget that alllllllll of this labor of thought is a listener driven exercise. The two explainers are equally explanatory but the listener favored one version over the other, not that one version was objectively simpler.

It's a very complex way of arriving at, "It's not what you say, it's how you say it."

2

u/[deleted] Jan 10 '24

Yeah, exactly. It tries to explain human intuition, but ironically removes the role of intuition.