Occam's Razor is a philosophical principle that may be stated in several different ways, perhaps most straightforwardly as 'the simplest explanation is the most likely to be true'
Over the years I've personally converged on a rule of thumb that smacks of Occam's Razor, but which isn't quite captured by the original. I can't believe it's a novel principle, so if anyone recognises it, shout out
First attempt at expressing it: "The explanation that is least capable of explaining anything else is the most likely to be true."
My personal poster-child for this principle is evolution. I find the fact of evolution (the truth of common descent with modification, as distinct from any particular theory describing the mechanisms by which it happened) overwhelmingly compelling precisely because its explanatory powers are so limited. Only things that self-replicate with potential for modification can evolve. Everything must be a modification of that which came before - even more specifically: the embryonic development of everything must be a course-change of embryonic development that came before.
The fact that all life ticks these incredibly specific, limiting boxes - with the shared ancestry and course-changes visible in its DNA - is what seals the deal for me. Anyone who comes at me brandishing Intelligent Design, telling me that it's a better explanation because an intelligent designer is more capable than no designer, is completely missing the point as far as I'm concerned. An intelligent designer could have done
anything. Frankly, Minecraft is a better designed habitat for humans than reality is. Positing an intelligent designer merely begs the question: why would he limit himself in these precise ways?
I'm posting this here because Flat Earth Theory rings all the same alarm bells in my head as Intelligent Design. I don't reject FET because it requires deformations of perspective, curved rays of light, non-euclidean space, or whatever. I don't even reject it because it requires an implausible worldwide conspiracy involving corporations acting against their own financial self-interest. No: I reject FET because these deformations of perspective, curved rays of light, and non-euclidean spaces
by an incredible and inexplicable coincidence just happen to make it look exactly as though the world is a ball, and
make the conspiracies possible.Think about it: if we asked someone to create a universe based on the general statement "Ok, the world is flat, and rays of light curve sharply over short distances, and space is profoundly non-euclidean" we would in 99.999999999% of cases see a total
mess when we looked up at the sky, or into the middle distance. Stars and the sun and the moon warping and shifting. Objects bending and squashing as we moved towards or away from them. And in those 99.999999999% of cases, nobody would even
think of claiming the world was a ball, let alone foster a worldwide conspiracy to that effect.
That's why the conspiracy theories are bullshit: because they require the universe to be in on the con. I can step outside my back door on any clear night, point my camera at Polaris and take a long exposure picture that confirms RET. Why the hell would that be the case if the world were flat? What are the chances of everything being fucked in the exact way and exact degree necessary to mislead me?