I want to speak for a moment about Occam's Razor. In case you don't know what that is, I cribbed this explanation off some website…
Occam's Razor is a principle of theory construction or evaluation according to which, other things equal, explanations that posit fewer entities, or fewer kinds of entities, are to be preferred to explanations that posit more.
Or to put it in simpler terms: The answer to most questions may well be the simplest one. This is not an "always" thing. Some answers are complicated and require a lot of research and explaining but one should not overlook the simplest answer. And why I'm bringing this up is that this morning, as I browsed the websites and forums I usually browse, I saw some examples where I think this applies. One was on a comic book forum where they were discussing, as comic book forums often do, which artist did the best job of inking Jack Kirby's artwork.
(For those of you who don't know what this means: Before digital technology offered several alternatives, comics were drawn in a two-stage process. An artist would draw the page in pencil. Then an artist — who might be the same artist but often was not — would finish the art in ink, tracing the pencil lines for the most part but also interpreting and adding things. So if one guy penciled and one guy inked, the finished product would be an amalgam. Some inkers weren't as good as others. Some also weren't as compatible with the pencilers they inked. So a lot of people might feel that Inker A enhanced Jack's work whereas Inker B butchered it…and there's a lot (a lot!) of debating as to which inkers did it well and which ones didn't.)
I saw a couple of folks asking — and I'll leave actual names out of this — "Why oh why did they assign Inker Q to Jack's work instead of Inker X, Inker Y or Inker Z? It's obvious Inker Q sucked!"
And they discount the simplest — and in this case, most frequent — answer. The editor who made the assignment thought Inker Q did a great job.
There could be other reasons. Inker Q might have been the only option available at that moment. Inker Q could have been the cheapest option and there were budget problems. Those are also pretty simple…but since the person asking that question hates Inker Q's work so much, he rules out those easy explanations. In his mind, it had to be something like "Inker Q had blackmail photos of the editor" or "Inker Q bribed the editor" or something like that. But the true answer more often involves one or more of those simple reasions.
And the most likely is that the editor liked Inker Q's work just like I like some movie that you don't or you love some musical group that I think blows or you don't recognize the utter awfulness of cole slaw that is so inarguable to me. I have my blind spots. I can't fathom anyone eating that stuff except maybe at gunpoint. Maybe delicatessen owners who have a surplus of that noxious concoction are sending out armed mercenaries to force the consumption of it. Yeah, that makes more sense to me than people actually liking it.
The other argument I saw today where I think Occam's Razor is likely is, of course, about Donald Trump. Most arguments in this country these days are about Donald Trump. The best reason I see for his defeat is that even though it will probably prompt more arguments about Donald Trump for a while, eventually they will abate, whereas if he wins, we'll be arguing about him for the rest of whatever's left of our lives.
His horribleness is so evident to some of us that we forget that some people have simple reasons for liking him. An acquaintance of mine who has probably already marked his ballot for Trump and mailed it off explained his thinking to me thusly. His number one issue is Abortion and he says,"For years, I've heard Republican candidates promise to do something about Abortion — Reagan, Romney, McCain, Dole, a couple of Bushes — and even the ones who got elected didn't do much. Trump actually did something."
You may not feel that's a good thing and I sure don't but it matters so much to this guy that he'll overlook the felonies, the lying, the graft, etc. It probably helps him ignore those things that he also believes that every single person who ever has or ever will run for President commits felonies, lies, takes graft, etc.
So the simple explanation is that he thinks Trump will give him things on his wishlist and Harris won't. He's also terrified of immigrants.
I'm not suggesting this is how everyone thinks. There certainly are more complex explanations out there that are valid for some people. I'm just saying that sometimes — maybe even most of the time — the real explanations are right there in front of us and we overlook them in search of something more complex. Then again, I guess I can understand that some people would rather consume cole slaw than have their brains blown out by a 9mm cartridge. But that's just about the only way I can imagine anyone eating that stuff.