RAZORS

What is a razor?? Rules, principles, razors. How does Occam get a razor, but not anyone else? except a few others that give themselves razors.. Spakly's razor. There. Now I have one too.

In Webster's dictionary, razor means only one thing: something you cut unwanted hair off with. Occam's razor has its own entry. Admittedly razor sounds cool. much better than principle or rule, and in his case it sort of makes sense in that he's "shaving away" unnecessary assumptions.

Occam's Razor: the explanation of any phenomenon should make as few assumptions as possible, eliminating those that make no difference in the observable predictions of the explanatory hypothesis or theory.

What about Hanlon's razor? It's not shaving away at anything.
Hanlon's Razor /prov./ A corollary of Finagle's Law, similar to Occam's
Razor, that reads "Never attribute to malice that which can be
adequately explained by stupidity."

I've never liked this first offspring of Occam's razor: KISS (Keep it Simple, Stupid),
Acronyms are stupid IMO
This one's much better: "When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras"
Zebras are more fun (stripes!), but a wrong choice.

Several anti-razors exist (meaning you can't shave anything with them).

Most famous may be Chatton's Anti-Razor: if three things are not enough to verify an affirmative proposition about things, a fourth must be added, and so on'
This is based on the idea that Occam's razor can't possibly be true since God created as many types of creatures as possible.

Um.. I'm not trying to stick up for Occam, but if God were really going for ultimate diversity, wouldn't every living thing on earth be insanely different? Ok, we're all different and special and unique, but there's no denying that there are billions of humans on the planet and God could've make things less simple by making us have different numbers of limbs, different types of brains, put our eyes (up to 50) in strange places, etc.

(Scott) Adams' (of Dilbert fame) razor: "The explanation that you believe is correct will always seem simplest to you."
How simple. How true.