Yesterday, my friend Bass pointed out that I had incorrectly used Occam’s razor in my post outlining my reasons for being an atheist.
“that one should proceed to simpler theories until simplicity can be traded for greater explanatory power. The simplest available theory need not be most accurate.”
Bass pointed out that my use of the razor was therefore incorrect because I used it to pick the hypothesis that the universe just exists over the competing hypothesis “the universe just exists because God just exists”. The second of these hypothesis has a greater explanatory power as it explains why the universe just exists.
I have therefore come up with my own philosophical principle which I have termed “Stewart’s cork.”
This principle basically does what I wanted Occam’s razor to do which it wasn’t designed to do. It basically stops arguments from going on and on and on ad infinitum.
For example, where we have said the universe exists because God just exists, we could then ask why God exists and from there get a response along the lines of “Well, when mummy God and daddy God love each other very much….”
We could then ask how mummy and daddy God exist and so on and so on. Stewart’s cork basically says: “Put a cork in it. Let’s stop there.”
There is an implied “BOOM!” at the end of that statement but it is optional and can be added depending on the context and likely reception of the statement.
So when we look at our competing theories on why the universe just exists, we can see that the second could go on and on so we put a cork in it and stop the infinite regression.
It is the equivalent of stopping a child going “whhyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy?” a lot by saying “just because.”
The principle has many other uses outside of just finding a way around Bass’s pedantic arguing. For example:
- Assigning blame when two children are fighting.
Let’s assume two random children named Dan and Luke are fighting and we want to punish the one who started it. We can imagine an argument that goes something along the lines of:
“He punched me!”
“He stole my concealer!”
“He hid all my make up!” etcetera.Stewart’s cork says: “put a cork in it. You threw the first punch. It’s your fault. BOOM!”
- Explaining history
I remember when I was at school and we had to learn all the reasons for why the First World War started. Obviously, as it was something I was forced to learn, I can’t remember a single thing about it now, so I’ve had to look it up.
The causes are as follows:
Austria-Hungary declared war against Serbia
because of the July crisis
because Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated
because of the conflicts and hostility in the preceding four decades
because of militarism, alliances….What this debate really needs is for someone to butt in and say: “Put a cork in it. Austria-Hungary are to blame. They declared war. Without that there might not have been a war. BOOM!”
History sorted.
- Mathematics
Pi is an exceptionally long number. In fact, it is so long that its decimal representation never ends and it never settles into a repeating pattern. In short, no-one will ever know what it is. You could start saying that it’s 3.14159… but what you really want to do is put a cork in that bad boy straight away and just say pi is 3. No point in learning much more than that when you’re never going to know the exact number.
If you really, really insist I might allow you to call it 3.1 in exceptional circumstances like if you’re an architect or a brain surgeon or are Santa or some other profession that requires exact measurements.
These are just some of the many possible uses of Stewart’s cork. Please share this amazing breakthrough in thinking with all of your friends. Thanks in advance.
P.S. Fuck you, Bass.