Saturday, November 7, 2015

What Marcomony is Not

On re-reading the Wikipedia version of Occams Razor, it is clear that Marcomony is not so much the opposite of parsimony which may state something like
"One must unnecessarily multiply parameters when fewer will do" Marcomony does not imply this.

Nor "the most complex solution is usually the correct one"

Nor"Among competing hypotheses the one with the most assumptions should be chosen"

Nor "Entities must be multiplied beyond necessity "

Marcomony is to be purely viewed as a way to sort and prioritise scientific ideas in the "market for scientific ideas"

When there is a shift in the burden of proof, the barrier of entry for a scientific idea becomes unreasonably high, and all the benefits that accrue from "free trade" in scientific ideas is lost.

As in the real world of free trade, the premise that free trade brings in a multitude of undesirable, unethical or damaging goods and services in competition with incumbent ones is completely unfounded. For every seller of a good or service in a free market, there is a willing buyer. If the buyer is reasonably informed, free trade benefits everyone *As a very vital rule of thumb* Exceptions do not disprove this rule of thumb, so unlike in Physics, where reduction to universal laws that give precise and correct answers to scientific questions, sciences like economics context is everything. Thus, the vital science that is learnt from economics (and Marconomics) is highly context sensitive.

In the same way, a free trade in scientific ideas (by relaxing the tariffs of parsimony) will not result in an infinity of balmy ideas. Scientists have to still buy these ideas, so reducing barriers of entry will actually show balmy ideas for what they are, because they will be more exposed to scrutiny from informed buyers, rather than being peddled to the general naive public. A lot of these new scientific ideas will be context sensitive, and may be useful only until the context changes, but some brand new categories of science will be revealed that will change the world forever.

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