It is Election Season: Time to Sharpen Your Occam’s Razor

It is time to sharpen your personal Occam’s Razor. It is time for you to be able to thinly slice and dissect the information you see and hear and decide reality from fantasy. Your ability to differentiate between these two will determine your level of sensibility versus gullibility. All this as we prepare to cast our ballots.

Assessing the spin when listening to stories and news headlines is increasingly difficult. These are written by highly skilled and well-paid scriptwriters whose role is to take a little truth and to create a tale for the most significant impact. It is a tale with just enough truth to shield the whole story from excessive scrutiny. They play with words to spin the facts to twist your mind. This is why you need to sharpen your Occam’s Razor. This requires us to accept that the one solution to a problem is the one with the smallest possible complexities or has the fewest assumptions. While deciphering the spin of misinformation it is a method which allows you to ask: ‘Does that really make sense?’ and/or ‘If there is underlying truth, what is it and how much?’ Another way to understand is ‘The simplest explanation is usually the best.’

During this election cycle, like the last, there is a plethora of bogus stories being created to try and make a point or generate fanatical reactions. When candidates purposely espouse unverifiable comments, look behind their intent. They aren’t trying to set or defend policy. They are shifting the discussion and casting it in such a light to cause anxiety and social division. They want to avoid the rare moment of candor when admitting it is acceptable to create stories for a campaign or candidate’s benefit. Simply put, they want you to believe it is all right for candidates to tell lies and continue to tell them in an unadulterated attempt to energize support. In our elections, dabbling in fantastical make-believe shouldn’t be acceptable to garnish support. It shows weakness of position and is insulting to the voters. Does it really make sense to claim one political party can control the weather and the other not? Is it really likely one political party would sponsor attempted assassinations and recruit inexperienced snipers? Is it really likely one candidate wants to be dictator for only one day? Do you really believe a vice-presidential candidate is plotting an Article 25 coup after inauguration? Did you really believe foreign corporations will pay tariffs or domestic consumers? Do you really believe any individual candidate can reduce inflation? And, do you really think those military personnel who have died, injured, or were captured are losers and suckers; really?

Sharpen your Occam’s Razor. Guard yourself against the frauds, lies, and spin. Question everything and everyone. Think critically. Ask yourself if something said makes basic common sense or if it is just too fantastical or complicated to be real and true. Is it simply a cooked-up story, a lie with a smidgen of truth, or a repeated lie which now seems true because it has been told so many times? The problem is these concocted fantasies seduce millions. It seems America’s standard of greatness is now based on lies, deception, and disparaging others while pandering to the gullible. There is value in credibility and believability, or at least there used to be.

The one thing salacious, rancorous, weak candidates do not want is a thinking, analytical voter. Candidates want the easily swayed and unsuspecting. They play with their fears and not their common sense. They weaponize fear, anxiety, disinformation, and hate fueled by lies to seduce you and secure your vote. This year, every year, disappoint them. Think for yourself and break away from the clutches of someone else’s twisted reality, which holds you captive. Listen, study, ask critical questions, and don’t be a single-issue voter. Exercise your Occam’s Razor and then vote accordingly, country before party.  #NeverFearTheDream    simplebender.com

A version of this article was first published in the Bend Bulletin 10/18/24