I agree that Occam’s razor is clearly the answer, clearly what was missing to support the George Hypothesis. I didn’t mention it in the original post because I can’t really quantify what is meant by that, and it kind of felt like a thought-stopper. 2 important questions:
1) When/how/under what conditions would you consider Occam’s razor satisfied in this example? (Feel free to add onto the fictional scenario). What if giants really did exist (though were few in number), and the tribe had seen one as recently as 20 years ago? [In this example, the earthquake is still caused by plate tectonics, not giants, but the tribe has never heard of such things.]
2) Is it ever acceptable to take on a belief like this, even if you’re not sure it satisfies Occam’s razor? Remember—the belief is USEFUL to these people—over the next 200 years it allows them to make apparently accurate predictions about the future (that the rumblings will continue sporadically, as opposed to being a 1-time thing)
Real-world analogies:
-Shminux mentioned neutrinos—GREAT example (link to his comment: http://tinyurl.com/97tkabf); as we CAN detect those nowadays, but at the time most folk couldn’t think of a good test to confirm/deny it.
-”Gravitons” spring to my mind—I don’t remember much quantum physics from undergrad, so I’m not on a position to judge, but in my ignorant opinion they seem like a very similar scenario—fit with the model of quantum physics, not much evidence against the idea, potentially useful, but not a lot of actual evidence (empirical or otherwise). (Would the Higgs Boson be a better metaphor?)
I agree that Occam’s razor is clearly the answer, clearly what was missing to support the George Hypothesis. I didn’t mention it in the original post because I can’t really quantify what is meant by that, and it kind of felt like a thought-stopper. 2 important questions:
1) When/how/under what conditions would you consider Occam’s razor satisfied in this example? (Feel free to add onto the fictional scenario). What if giants really did exist (though were few in number), and the tribe had seen one as recently as 20 years ago? [In this example, the earthquake is still caused by plate tectonics, not giants, but the tribe has never heard of such things.]
2) Is it ever acceptable to take on a belief like this, even if you’re not sure it satisfies Occam’s razor? Remember—the belief is USEFUL to these people—over the next 200 years it allows them to make apparently accurate predictions about the future (that the rumblings will continue sporadically, as opposed to being a 1-time thing)
Real-world analogies:
-Shminux mentioned neutrinos—GREAT example (link to his comment: http://tinyurl.com/97tkabf); as we CAN detect those nowadays, but at the time most folk couldn’t think of a good test to confirm/deny it.
-”Gravitons” spring to my mind—I don’t remember much quantum physics from undergrad, so I’m not on a position to judge, but in my ignorant opinion they seem like a very similar scenario—fit with the model of quantum physics, not much evidence against the idea, potentially useful, but not a lot of actual evidence (empirical or otherwise). (Would the Higgs Boson be a better metaphor?)