[This article was originally published here.]
Sol Luckman
Occam’s razor is a highly useful philosophical principle attributed to a fourteenth-century logician named William of Ockham.
As it is used in science, the principle is often understood thus:
When you have two or more competing theories for explaining a given phenomenon, the simpler (or simplest) theory is likely to be true.
This helps explain why so many convoluted conspiracy theories, as much as they might appeal to our desire to make sense of our world’s confusing darkness and weirdness, are simply untrue—or at best, only partially accurate.
Today we have a particularly pernicious conspiracy theory making the rounds.
Heavily promoted by bestselling author David Wilcock (much of whose research in other areas remains valuable IMHO) and many, many others in the alternative media, this conspiracy theory holds that CO…