Occam's Razor and Stupid College Students.

People are fucking stupid.

I know, I know, I know. That’s a well-established fact. It’s practically my mantra. It’s almost incontrovertible enough to get it tattooed across my body for all the world to see. The only things you can count in are death, taxes, and the stupidity of the human race.

But I recently got an e-mail that just further cemented that belief. It combines two of the most popular rant topics: human stupidity, and the state of American education.

For one of my classes, I had to give a presentation of a YouTube video that had something to do with science. I chose the ever popular “spiders on drugs” video (just search for “spiders on drugs” at YouTube). During my presentation, I went through the scientific method, and mentioned something about Occam’s Razor. It was completely in context and appropriately used—I made sure of that.

During the presentation, my classmates wrote down comments, which the professor typed up (presumably to remove the temptation to analyze the handwriting and corner those who didn’t like our presentation in a dark alleyway on campus) and e-mailed to the entire class.

He didn’t just send us the comments pertaining to our own presentations-- that would have made sense! Instead, he sent us a thirteen-page word document of every single comment written about everyone. He didn’t even separate them by person—just one long list, which left us to figure out which of the approximately 325 comments were about us.

A saner person might have said ‘fuck it.’ I, of course, read all thirteen pages.

Most of the comments were bland and unhelpful. “Don’t read off the powerpoint slides.” “Don’t shuffle around.” "Cursing is inappropriate in a classroom environment."

There was one, however, that caught my eye. I read it about three times before I understood what my classmate was trying to say:

“Still confused, talked as if the reactions were real. Acombs razor? What did that have to do with anything? How do we know this is true. Should have had better explanation of elements of science”

I still don’t quite understand the first part—I think that they were asking if I thought that spiders exposed to THC actually built hammocks and lazed around, watching other spiders work.

What astonished me was the phrase “Acombs razor.” Not Occam’s razor, to be sure. Acombs razor.

If I ran into you on the street and you didn’t know what Occam’s razor meant, I would probably be nonplussed. But this was not an encounter from some banal reality TV show. This was a comment from someone who had ostensibly met rigorous academic criteria to get into college—someone who was supposed to be elite. Judging from the makeup of the class I was in, someone who was planning on majoring in the natural sciences.

And they had no idea what Occam’s razor even meant.

For those of you who don’t, I’ll explain. Occam’s razor is a principle often invoked in discussion of theories. It states that “all other things being equal, the simplest solution is the best.” Effectively, if you have several theories that result in the same phenomenon, chances are good that the simplest will be the real explanation.

I just can’t get it through my mind that someone who is supposed to be intelligent has no idea that this principle exists. They didn’t say that I’d misused the term; they didn’t ask me to clarify what I meant by it; they had no idea what it was. They didn’t even know how it was spelled!

No one teaches logic anymore. The only reason I know most of what I do about logic (you can interchange many topics with the word “logic” here, but that’s yet another rant) is because I research it on my own time. I’m incredibly self-educated—I read everything I can get my hands on, and I look up almost everything that I don’t understand. I hate not knowing something—why is that not the case with other people?

I almost wouldn’t be so pissed about this if anyone had any common sense whatsoever. The other night, at around 11:30 PM, the fire alarm went off. Silently thanking whatever god may exist that I hadn’t been in the shower at the time, I made my way downstairs and outside, where I learned that the alarm had been set off because some idiot had left popcorn in the microwave for too long and started a fire.

How the fuck do you get the be eighteen years old, moderately intelligent, and not know how to make a bag of microwave popcorn without burning down an entire dorm building? It’s not that complicated—you take off the plastic, make sure the side that says “this side up” is facing up, and set the microwave for three minutes. Then you stay in the kitchenette until the popcorn is done, take it out, open at the end that says “open here,” and enjoy the buttery goodness. I've been doing it myself since I was six-- are you really stupider than someone who hasn't yet encountered the concept of multiplication?

Sometimes, I wish I lived in an island community that you had to pass tests to get into. Intelligence tests, common sense tests, and personality assessments. Problem is, the rest of the world would probably go to Hell and drag us down with them.

Fuckers.