thinking-occams-razorlisted

# Occam's Razor (Parsimony Principle) ## Overview Occam's Razor, attributed to 14th-century philosopher William of Ockham, states: "Entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity" (entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem). When multiple explanations fit the evidence equally well, prefer the simplest one—the one with the fewest assumptions. **Core Principle:** Among competing hypotheses that explain the data equally well, select the one with the fewest assumptions. **Einstein's Corollary:** "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler." ## When to Use - Debugging: Multiple hypotheses could explain a bug - Architecture: Choosing between design approaches - Root cause analysis: Several causes seem plausible - Code review: Evaluating implementation complexity - Technical decisions: Selecting between tools or patterns - Incident response: Narrowing down failure causes Decision flow: ``` Multiple explanations exist? → yes → Do they explain the evidence equally? → yes → APPLY OCCAM'S RAZOR ↘ no → Prefer better explanation ↘ no → Use available explanation ``` ## The Process ### Step 1: Enumerate Competing Hypotheses List all plausible explanations for the observed behavior: ``` Bug: Users intermittently can't log in Hypotheses: A. Session token expiration edge case B. Race condition in auth service C. Database connection pool exhaustion D