Occam’s Razor is the problem-solving principle that recommends searching for explanations constructed with the smallest possible set of elements. This funny and tragic poem is a parody of the misuse of the principle of Occam’s Razor to over-simplify and round down to nothing inconvenient elements such as the subtle properties of life itself. In this poem, Occam, skeptical of the difference between animate and inanimate matter, life and death, takes the matter into his own hands and slits his wrists, a darkly comic commentary on the scientific method and rigorous observation taken too extremes. The note, “as told by Gödel,” is a reference to Gödel’s incompleteness theorems, which state that no logical system can demonstrate its own consistence; or put otherwise, every formal logical system will have false elements within it and true elements outside the system. Yep, reality is vexing for claims of absolute truths in an ideology/world-view and for zero tolerance of uncertainty. More simply put, advanced mathematics warns us of fundamentalism and advises humility. Read the mathematics if you like. Though, the poem is much more satisfying…
Occam’s Razor (as told by Gödel)
An incomparable mud pie of stardust and luck
He pondered the probabilities
Of the inconceivable, or perhaps impossible
And that betwixt!
The thinnest of lines believable
And seaming true
Or know line at awe
Unafraid to raze the possibility
Of no difference between life and death
He took the matter
In his own hands
A simple solution to a complex problem
A testable hypothesis proving true
As only lie there
Occam and his razor
