Occam’s Razor
The Basic Idea
Imagine you have plans with your friend to go grab a drink after work. A couple of hours before, you get one of the following texts:
Text A: Sorry to do this, but my stomach is feeling weird and I have a bit of a fever and don’t think I’m up for a drink. I also think I’ll be staying at the office later than expected because I was just assigned to this huge project. My grandma also hasn’t been doing so well recently so if I do have spare time I should go check in on her. Can we reschedule drinks?
Text B: Hey, my stomach is feeling a little weird. Can we reschedule drinks?
Despite the fact that Text A has more precise details, we are likely to feel annoyed by the overwhelming amount of information and excuses our friend is presenting. Text B is a simple explanation and gets straight to the point, making us more likely to believe and accept it.
It turns out, even when it comes to more complex matters - like scientific theories or philosophical dilemmas - we tend to favor the simple explanation over the complicated one. This rule of thumb is known as Occam’s razor, and helps us eliminate overly elaborate theories as they are impenetrable and hard to prove or disprove.1 However, it is important to note that favoring the simpler explanation does not mean it is true. It is simply a heuristic that helps guide philosophers, scientists and policymakers on how best to approach a phenomenon.
You gave too much rein to your imagination. Imagination is a good servant, and a bad master. The simplest explanation is always the most likely.
– Agatha Christie, in her detective novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles2
About the Authors
Dan Pilat
Dan is a Co-Founder and Managing Director at The Decision Lab. He is a bestselling author of Intention - a book he wrote with Wiley on the mindful application of behavioral science in organizations. Dan has a background in organizational decision making, with a BComm in Decision & Information Systems from McGill University. He has worked on enterprise-level behavioral architecture at TD Securities and BMO Capital Markets, where he advised management on the implementation of systems processing billions of dollars per week. Driven by an appetite for the latest in technology, Dan created a course on business intelligence and lectured at McGill University, and has applied behavioral science to topics such as augmented and virtual reality.
Dr. Sekoul Krastev
Dr. Sekoul Krastev is a decision scientist and Co-Founder of The Decision Lab, one of the world's leading behavioral science consultancies. His team works with large organizations—Fortune 500 companies, governments, foundations and supernationals—to apply behavioral science and decision theory for social good. He holds a PhD in neuroscience from McGill University and is currently a visiting scholar at NYU. His work has been featured in academic journals as well as in The New York Times, Forbes, and Bloomberg. He is also the author of Intention (Wiley, 2024), a bestselling book on the science of human agency. Before founding The Decision Lab, he worked at the Boston Consulting Group and Google.
