I just watched the movie Contact for something like the fifth time. I am going to comment on it but I don’t think that I will be extracting a life lesson at this time. I will say this. Contact is one of the most disturbing movies I’ve ever seen. I believe that it became disturbing quite naturally in its effort to be profound. I suspect that the average moviemaker can’t do the latter without the former. In fact, the average moviemaker can’t do the latter with the former either but that’s not the point. I’m not going to get into the disturbing philosophical stuff. I’m simply going to address the logical problem. Twice in that movie the principle of Ockham’s Razor is used. Once by the protagonist and once thrown in her face. I assume that the cleverness of that is supposed to tie into all that profound shit which I am not addressing here. I wish to talk about the use itself. Firstly the definition given in the movie (as opposed to a definition given in reality). Ockham’s razor says simply that all else being equal the simplest explanation tends to be the correct one. The first time this principle gets screen time it is used to support the idea of a godless universe. In order for this to be valid a vild use you have to show why the natural evolution of stars, galaxies, life, and intelligence is simpler than their creation by a supreme being. Now this is where I have a big disadvantage. In a movie you can use the tone-probability theorum to establish the likelihood of different possibilities. Here in text you have to guess at my tone of voice, and therefore the relative probability of God or Not. This is what passes for logic in a movie. Bah. As for me until someone can show me the relative complexity of these two theories I will not apply Ockam’s razor to the question.

The second example is just as circular and dependent on the aforementioned T-P theorum. This time poor Jodie has Ockam thrown in her face in order to discredit her story about her pod experience. The “bad guy” or more accurately one of the roughly 20 bad guys claims that the big hoax explanation is simpler than the aliens explanation. The only way that that makes sense is if you presuppose the nonexistence of aliens. Feh. This is too stupid to explain. I suggest that movie makers stick with movie logic. It is way more entertaining.