11 Philosophical Razors to Simplify Your Life

https://themindcollection.com/philosophical-razors/

1. Sagan’s Standard

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

2. Grice’s Razor

Address what someone meant to say instead of the literal meaning of the words.

3. Hume’s Guillotine

What ought to be cannot be deduced from what is.

4. Alder’s Razor

If it cannot be settled by observation or experiment, it’s not worth debating at all.

5. Feynman’s Razor

If you can’t explain something simply, then you don’t really understand it.

6. Hitchen’s Razor

What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.

7. Occam’s Razor

Simpler explanations are more likely to be correct; avoid unnecessary or improbable assumptions.

8. Hanlon’s Razor

Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

9. Riker’s Razor

If someone’s incompetence is too staggering to be true, they’re most likely faking it and you should find out why.

10. Jung’s Razor

If you cannot understand why someone did something, look at the consequences — and infer the motivation.

11. Chatton’s Anti-Razor

If three things are not enough to verify an affirmative proposition about things, a fourth must be added and so on.