I do not recall any instances on the Dope where a poster proposed a theory that was then shot down by the multitudes “because Occam’s Razor neener neener”. I think there have been cases where this principle was cited as part of an argument, to get the theorizer to think about more logical possibilities.
If debates have been shot down through use of Occam’s Razor, perhaps kanicbird can point us to the thread(s) in question.
Otherwise I think we’re dealing with a strawman here.
Did you read mine?
I’m saying Occam’s razor is not “The simplest explanation is usually the right one”. Only one post above me said a similar thing (Blake’s), and (s)he didn’t explicitly say that the popular paraphrasing was wrong, so it was still worthwhile for me to state that opinion.
Most of the posts so far have assumed that “The simplest explanation…” is exactly what Occam’s razor is.
So far as I can tell, this is the case that kanicbird is referring to in the OP (assuming it’s not just used incorrectly). If I say “My explanation is simpler than yours” and use Occam’s razor as a “trump,” that’s just shorthand for: because your explanation is more complicated or requires more elements, your burden of proof is higher than mine. In a debate or argument where nobody can any real proof for their side (see basically anything in Great Debates…) the simpler explanation should be the assumed default.
To pick an example relevant to the OP: If I say I got a traffic ticket because I was speeding, and you say I got a traffic ticket because demons are battling for my soul in spiritual court, Occam’s razor favors my explanation, and is a reasonable “trump” because there’s no further evidence either of us can produce to prove our side.
If you really want to get wild, read up on William of Ockham, the monk dude. As you might expect, the original and our bastardization of “occam’s razor” is quite different.
Here I think an inductive proof makes more sense than having to label one explanation as “simpler”.
No-one disputes that millions of people speed every day, and thousands of them get speeding tickets. So just from experience I favour that explanation first. It’s not a question of which one is simpler, whatever that would mean.
( Actually that gives me a 4th reason why “The simplest explanation is usually the right one” doesn’t work: How do we define “simplest”? Most elegant model, most familiar, something else?)
From a more empirical standpoint, the space of possible hypotheses goes up exponentially with complexity* which means you’re far more likely to find a hypothesis that fits the data by co-incidence rather than by design. This means that you need a substantial increase in explanatory power before you can justify adding complexity to a hypothesis.
*Where complexity is defined as degrees of freedom or dimensionality.
The way it’s been explained to me, Occam’s razor favours the explanation that requires fewer assumptions about how the world works. I don’t think I’ve heard a better way to describe simplicity.