As Simple As Possible, But Not Simpler

I don't know what's happened to Michael Kinsley. I can't recall anything he's done in years which has the snap, focus and wit of his work in The New Republic.

For example, his review in The New York Times of Christopher Hitchens' latest book is almost completely worthless. Literally half of it is spent discussing Hitchens' career before Kinsley notes this book has nothing to do with the author's past. And once he gets around to the book itself, the discussion is more piecemeal than unified.

So fine, a pointless review, it's not the first time. But I was bothered by how Kinsley, as have so many before him, misstates the principle of Occam's Razor: "simple explanations are more likely to be correct than complicated ones."

Kinsley misses an essential qualification--evidence matters. Keep the explanation as simple as you can, but don't ignore the facts. Indeed, we regularly accept extremely complex and non-intuitive explanations, rejecting simpler and even more popular answers, because we've done the research that makes these explanations more likely to be true.