On The Razors Edge

Occam's Razor is a philosophical rule (and that's rule in a very soft sense) that we can use to help us with problem solving. In philosophy a razor is a tool used to eliminate (or shave off) options that might lead us astray.

Occam's Razor is one of the most popular examples and has made it's way into popular culture from the movie Contact to Sherlock Holmes to The Big Bang Theory.

I imagine that a lot of you have heard of the famous razor before, which states that: plurality should not be posited without necessity. Now I'm sure that's perfectly clear for most of you, but for my benefit I'm going to do a bit of unpacking on that phrase, cause plurality should not be posited without necessity seems a bit dense to me.

The basic idea here is that when we're looking at competing ideas we want to go with the one that has the fewest assumptions - or that the simplest explanation is often preferable to a complex one.

Of course the rule on simplicity also isn't as simply as it seems. Today we're going to be exploring Occam's Razor and also looking at how we can apply it to coming up with better solutions for our ADHD.

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Find the show note at HackingYourADHD.com/occamsrazor

This Episode's Top Tips

1. Occam's Razor states: plurality should not be posited without necessity - or more simply when we're looking at competing ideas we want to go with the one that has the fewest assumptions - or that the simplest explanation is often preferable to a complex one.
2. With ADHD we can use Occam's Razor to help when we're trying to overcomplicate something - often we go all in on ideas and don't let ourselves see the forest for the trees.
3. While the simplest explanation is often preferable we also have to keep in mind that we have ADHD - what might be a simple solution for a neurotypical might not be a viable solution for us.