Latest news with #Occam
New Indian Express
11-07-2025
- Business
- New Indian Express
A simple way to look at Trump's complex agenda
Occam's razor, a problem-solving principle, suggests that given the choice between multiple explanations, the simpler, obvious one is to be preferred. Applying this approach, US President Donald Trump's agenda does not require complex economic or political theorising. They involve three simple objectives. The first is power. The president wants to increase his own authority, forcing others to supplicate themselves. The reciprocal tariffs require countries to make 'phenomenal offers' to buy favourable treatment. NATO chief Mark Rutte's craven flattery, including allegedly referring to Trump as 'daddy', is the behaviour expected. The second objective flows from the president's association of intelligence with wealth—the attitude summed up by the line, 'If you're so smart, how come you're not rich.' Many of his policies are designed to enrich the president and his funders. Examples include the first family's own investments and trading, BlackRock's pending acquisition of two Panamanian ports and the administration-aligned firms' interest in TikTok's US business. The parallel is 1990s' Russia, where a small group of oligarchs became wealthy by looting state assets as the Soviet empire disintegrated. The third involves Thomas Carlyle's 'great man of history' theory. Trump sees himself as an extraordinary leader, possessing superior intellect and heroic courage, whose manifest destiny is to change and rule over America and the world. This is allied to nostalgia and a worldview firmly rooted in the 1980s. A reordering of the international trading and monetary system is central to this strategy. Prior to joining the administration as chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, Stephen Miran published a proposal to lower the dollar's value and reduce current account and fiscal deficits. Popularly known as the 'Mar-a-Lago Accord'—a nod to the Plaza and Louvre accords of the 1980s—it includes a series of steps, including tariffs and currency adjustments to force economic concessions favourable to the US from other nations. One controversial component is a restructuring of US public debt entailing a forced exchange of some US treasuries for long-dated (100-year or perpetual), low- or zero-interest securities to lengthen maturities and provide secure funding. Alternatively foreign holders of US government bonds can place them in escrow or pay an 'user fee'. Controls over capital movements into and out of the US are possible.
Medscape
15-05-2025
- Health
- Medscape
Hey, Hospitalists, Those Hoofbeats Sometimes May Be a Zebra
Kelly Chellis could have dismissed the random swollen knee on her then-6-year-old, Trys. At that age, children get injured all the time, and Trys could have tripped, twisted it on the playground, or done one of many other things and simply forgotten to mention it. While Trys's swollen knee at first seemed to fall under the category of typical childhood bumps and bruises, the journey that followed is an important example of the need for hospitalists to stay curious and keep an open mind in patient diagnosis. 'The week of Trys's sixth birthday, they woke up one morning with their right knee swollen to the size of a softball,' Chellis recalled. 'We kept saying, 'Does it hurt?' but Trys really wanted to just go on to school.' Kelly Chellis Chellis' instincts, fine-tuned where Trys was concerned, given that the child had survived a congenital heart defect, gave her pause, though. She took Trys to their regular pediatrician, where x-rays were taken. Although the films showed nothing irregular, the pediatrician had them proceed to Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. 'We were put on the infectious disease floor because they thought that there was an infection in the kneecap, and they were just (administering) IV [intravenous] antibiotics,' Chellis recalled, saying that all of the tests that the epidemiologists ran came back normal. Protocols on the floor restricted their movements in case Trys had something communicable. As Chellis kept them occupied inside their room, a break in the case emerged from a strangely timed art project. 'Out of the blue, [Trys] wanted to draw a hand turkey. In March, that's kind of odd — to want to draw a turkey,' Chellis said. 'But I'm like, great, I'll trace your hand. Then when Trys laid their hand down on the table, their fingers would not actually lay flat.' Chellis immediately drew the care team's attention to Trys's hand, which led to the hospital's rheumatology team joining the case. Shortly thereafter, Trys was diagnosed with juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA). Chellis was stunned, but they finally had an answer. Don't Let the Obvious Block the Possible Occam's Razor, often attributed to 14th-century friar William of Ockham, said that if you have two competing ideas to explain the same phenomenon, you should prefer the simpler one. A frequently used, more colloquial explanation of the principle is 'When you hear hoofbeats, look for horses, not zebras.' While Occam's razor is helpful in many situations, it has a caveat: Zebras still exist, especially in the medical field. Trying to find the balance between relying on medical training, which is based on pattern recognition and hard data, and the potential for a variety of diseases, like JIA in Trys's case, to manifest on the diagnostic spectrum can be difficult, especially for doctors just entering the field. Rebecca Carter, MD 'In any diagnosis, I try to consider the two extremes: One, what is most likely, and two, what would be most dangerous to miss,' said Rebecca Carter, MD, associate professor of pediatrics and division head of General Pediatrics at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore. 'While much of what we do in medicine, and certainly most of what I do in general pediatrics, comes down to the notion that common things are common, our most significant impact, and the true foundation of our training, comes down to not missing the rare or less common presentations.' While there are many such diseases that affect all ages, JIA is a textbook example of a diagnostic outlier in many ways: First, as profiled in Trys's case, the symptoms of JIA — a group of disorders in which the immune system mistakenly targets the body's own joints and tissues, triggering widespread inflammation — can overlap with more common conditions like sports injuries or infections. Many other early symptoms compiled by the Arthritis Foundation , like morning stiffness and mild fever, are nonspecific, and symptoms come and go and can be anywhere from mild to excruciatingly painful and disabling during attacks. All of these factors make JIA diagnostically elusive, even though it is the most common form of arthritis in young people, affecting about 300,000 children in the United States, according to statistics from the Arthritis Foundation. As a result, the American College of Rheumatology reported that some children wait months, even years, for a diagnosis. 'JIA is a challenge to diagnose, particularly because most kids just compensate for any joint issues they could possibly have by limping or just making up for it in any way that helps them keep going,' said Aixa Toledo-Garcia, RhMSUS, and managing partner at The Center for Rheumatology in Albany, New York. Toledo-Garcia is not affiliated with Trys's case but said the pattern of their diagnosis is very common. 'It's usually the parent that notices the limp or the swollen joint. Practical Care and Uncommon Diagnoses: Maintaining a Balance Carter said that longtime pattern recognition experience in a clinical setting is what alerts doctors to medical outliers like JIA. 'As physicians, we have to see hundreds or even thousands of cases of the same common illness in order to detect when something feels off or different about the patient in front of us,' she said. 'All those hours of medical school and residency give us this perspective, to help us to fully trust our gut when there is something uncommon about how a child presents, and to know when to dive a bit deeper to explore alternative diagnoses to make sure we get it right.' 'Yet' is a great addition to carrying out the process of diagnosis, added Dympna Weil, MD, a board-certified obstetrician/gynecologist and master coach at Prescribing Possibility in Upstate New York. 'By this, I mean, we must use those skills we learn and continue to hone with time. We need to let go of any ego we have and embrace the fact that we don't and cannot possibly know everything,' Weil said. 'Sometimes, patients' bodies don't read the textbooks. They may present differently than the books would tell us they 'should.' So admitting we aren't sure exactly what is going on yet can go a long way in keeping our minds open to other diagnostic possibilities.' If the patient doesn't improve after being given the standard treatment for the diagnosis reached, Weil said clinicians should stay open to the possibility that perhaps the initial diagnosis was incorrect. 'We may need to go back to the history and listen again to the patient's presentation or reassess their physical exam to better inform us. It is critical to confidently know what you know, but equally, to know what you don't know and to not be afraid to ask for a consult or pursue a different path.' Trys's diagnosis of JIA, while shocking, brought clarity. It shifted the family's focus toward proactive care, which included immunosuppressive medications to reduce inflammation and slow disease progression. Since then, both Chellis and her child have become advocates for JIA and participants in the fight for better healthcare policies both statewide and nationally. Partially as a result of their experience, Trys is now studying for their Medical College Admission Tests, and their medical career will clearly be informed by how their diagnosis and subsequent treatment played out. Standing Out in the Herd Medical training emphasizes pattern recognition and probability for a reason: You don't have time to agonize over each and every one of the thousands of possibilities that the rash on the patient in bed 5 might indicate. However, there are times that the most meaningful diagnoses come from the smallest observations, the details that might otherwise seem inconsequential. More than anything else, the fact that a child's random idea to draw a hand turkey in the middle of March ended up being a critically important key to diagnosis highlights the fact that curiosity is an essential tool in medicine, right alongside the stethoscope. You may even have to fight a few people on this, but sometimes, when you hear hoofbeats, they don't belong to a horse. Sometimes, they really do belong to a zebra.
Forbes
08-05-2025
- Business
- Forbes
The Future Of Work, Through Occam's Razor: It's All About People
Nikhil Arora , CEO of Epignosis, has over 25 years of experience in SaaS for SMBs, including roles at GoDaddy, WeWork, Intuit and ADP. getty For too long, we've overcomplicated the future of work—treating it like a puzzle to solve. But the answer has always been simple: Work isn't about managing processes; it's about managing people. Occam's Razor reminds us that the simplest explanation is often the right one. Strip away the noise and outdated systems, and you're left with a core truth: People are the driving force behind every organization's success. We're not just witnessing a shift—we're rewriting the contract between companies and their people. Welcome to Work 3.0: where talent, adaptability and engagement define success. Many still cling to the rules of Work 1.0 and 2.0, where efficiency and hierarchy reigned. That era is over. The new world of work demands new leadership and a renewed focus on human potential. Work 1.0: The Industrial Work Era Back when work predominately meant physical labor (think assembly lines, factories, etc.,) managers were enforcers. Productivity was measured in output per hour, and employees were often viewed as replaceable cogs in a system. Then came automation, electricity and economic shifts, which moved us into... Work 2.0: The Knowledge Work Era The mid-20th century brought a shift to corporate hierarchies, knowledge-based jobs and office life. Managers became process optimizers—focused on efficiency, workflows and predictable results. But by the late '90s/early 2000s, technology was moving faster than management models could keep up. Then, a few key moments made Work 2.0 unsustainable: • The Dot-Com Boom and Bust forced businesses to rethink digital transformation. • The 2008 Financial Crisis gave rise to the gig economy. • The 2010s Tech Explosion introduced remote work, automation and new work flexibility. • Then, Covid happened. And in less than a year, everything changed. Work 3.0: The Talent-Driven Era The pandemic didn't create Work 3.0—it just made it unavoidable. Remote work, hybrid models, digital collaboration and flexible careers had been creeping in for years. But when companies had no choice but to trust employees to work unsupervised, an uncomfortable truth surfaced: People didn't need process-heavy managers nearly as much as we thought. That's when Work 3.0 took hold, revealing: • Skill density matters more than tenure. • Autonomy outperforms micromanagement. • People want more than a paycheck; they want engagement, meaning and growth. What the Data Tells Us—And Why It Matters If you think your employees are engaged, the numbers suggest otherwise. Gallup's latest data reveals: • Only 32% of employees feel engaged at work. • 18% are actively disengaged—not just doing the bare minimum but struggling with motivation and, in some cases, pulling others down with them. • The economic impact of disengagement? A staggering $8.8 trillion in lost productivity. And here's another challenge: 45% of managers say their companies aren't doing enough to develop future leaders, according to a recent TalentLMS survey. That means organizations aren't just losing talent; they're missing the opportunity to nurture and grow it. If leadership development remains reserved for the top 1%, what happens to the 99% left behind? They stall. They disengage. Eventually, they leave. The New Rules Of Work 3.0 If Work 1.0 was about optimizing production, and Work 2.0 was about optimizing processes, then Work 3.0 is about optimizing people's potential. And that means managers must do these four things better than ever. 1. Build skill density (not just hire for roles). With AI automating tasks and industries evolving fast, companies don't need role-fillers—they need learners and adapters. That calls for a culture of continuous learning, where managers are skill builders, not just performance trackers. Leadership development must go beyond the top tier. It's about equipping leaders at every level with the right capabilities to move the business forward. One-size-fits-all programs won't cut it. Organizations must define the leadership skills they truly need and build systems to grow them across the board. A manager's top KPI isn't revenue or process—it's people. If your team isn't growing, neither is your business. 2. Adapt to flexible work models (because employees already have). Remote, hybrid, in-office—it doesn't matter. The best talent expects flexibility and trust in how they work. The managers who win in Work 3.0 are the ones who know how to create inclusion, drive collaboration and ensure performance — without micromanaging. 3. Focus on engagement and retention (because turnover is the real cost killer). Retention isn't just an HR function—it's a leadership responsibility. It starts with creating meaningful growth opportunities, fostering psychological safety and building a workplace culture where employees feel valued and invested in the long term. 4. Lead with empathy and adaptability (because people want purpose, not just a paycheck). While compensation matters, the strongest driver of engagement is a sense of belonging and purpose at work. Employees thrive when they feel valued and supported—not just as workers but as individuals. Notably, 80% of workers report that learning enhances their sense of purpose in their roles. This underscores the importance of providing growth opportunities to keep employees engaged and invested. This isn't just about workplace culture; it's a strategic advantage. Leaders who build trust, foster purpose and adapt to their teams' needs will attract and retain top talent. Why Work 3.0 Demands A Growth Mindset Yet the most critical skill in Work 3.0 isn't technical. It's mental. A growth mindset—the belief that abilities can be developed through effort, learning and persistence—is the single biggest differentiator between leaders who thrive and those who fail. The best managers don't have all the answers. They find them. They don't fear change—they adapt to it. They don't punish failure—they see it as learning. The companies that embrace this will win. The Bottom Line: Keep It Simple—People Over Processes If this all sounds too complicated, let's go back to Occam's Razor. The simplest explanation is usually the right one. And the simplest truth about work today is this: If you invest in your people's potential, you'll thrive. The future of work isn't about managing workflows. It's about managing potential—creating an environment where people feel empowered to grow, innovate and bring their best to the table every day. Forbes Technology Council is an invitation-only community for world-class CIOs, CTOs and technology executives. Do I qualify?
Yahoo
27-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Contributor: The 'Signalgate' theories may be entertaining, but they're probably not correct
The venerable logical principle known as Occam's razor, attributed to the 14th century English philosopher and theologian William of Ockham, asserts that when confronted with multiple possible explanations for a causal phenomenon, the simplest explanation is — absent persuasive evidence to the contrary — usually correct. Although hardly foolproof or comprehensive, Occam's razor has the benefit of simply making a lot of sense. The problem is that Occam's razor, as a general signpost to help make sense of the many things happening all around us, falls out of favor in an era when institutional trust is in free-fall. And so it is today: From organized religion to the military to the media to Wall Street to public health authorities to Congress and the Supreme Court, public polling across recent decades typically shows a very negative trendline when it comes to Americans' trust in virtually all of our major institutions. To be sure, much of this collapse in public trust has been self-inflicted. The Catholic Church sexual abuse scandal, which first came to light more than two decades ago, undermined public trust in institutional religion in general. Many legacy media brands have largely abandoned objectivity or political neutrality, acting instead as culture-warring crusaders. Wall Street did itself no favors with the 2008 global financial crisis — as well as the subsequent Troubled Asset Relief Program bailout. Public health officials utterly botched aspects of their handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, from lockdown rules to the virus' origins. Congress often seems incapable of doing anything other than hurl petty invectives across the aisle. And the Supreme Court is led by a chief justice who ironically exalts his tribunal's 'institutional integrity' so much that he ends up delegitimizing it. We live in a decidedly populist age, and much of our underlying angst is justified — indeed, it is sometimes righteous. Public authorities have routinely dropped the ball and made egregiously bad decisions. Media bias is very real — and so is congressional incompetence. Oftentimes, the American ruling class — as the late, great intellectual Angelo Codevilla famously described it in a 2010 essay — really does prioritize its own parochial interests over the supreme imperative of the common good. But there is a profound danger, always bubbling just below the surface, of anti-institutional sentiment going too far. Institutional dysfunction trains us to find or dream up arcane and irrational explanations for what we see in the world. At some point, Occam's razor gets turned on its head: The simplest or most logical explanation cannot possibly be true because that's what the powers that be want you to believe! Alternative explanations, often wildly elaborate and bearing little to no basis in factual reality, are proposed — sometimes in a circuitous manner, done in the ostensible name of 'just asking questions.' We saw this familiar script play out in the major domestic story of the past week: the 'Signalgate' group chat texting scandal that has taken the nation by storm. On Monday, the editor of the Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, reported that he had inexplicably been added to a high-level group chat earlier this month on the encrypted commercial messaging app Signal. The chat, comprising top-ranking Trump administration officials such as Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and national security advisor Michael Waltz, debated and discussed plans for U.S. strikes on the Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen (which have since come to fruition). They all seemed oblivious to Goldberg's presence. There are numerous glaring questions that must be asked from this most embarrassing error, perhaps chief among them: How in the world did Jeffrey Goldberg, who did more than any other journalist in America to sell Barack Obama's Iran nuclear deal one decade ago, get added to this chat? Waltz organized the Signal chat, and many have been calling for his head all week. Waltz, a four-time Bronze Star recipient who became the first Army Special Forces soldier ever elected to Congress, tends — like President Trump himself — to be more aggressive when it comes to confronting the terrorist Iranian regime and its sprawling web of regional proxies. Accordingly, there are actors on the left and the Tucker Carlson-aligned right who want to sideline Waltz. Some of these propagandists have thus speculated that perhaps Waltz intentionally leaked to Goldberg — or perhaps that Waltz served as a Goldberg source inside the Trump administration. But these ideologically driven explanations for "Signalgate" are implausible. The simplest explanation, per Occam's razor, is that someone in Waltz's office messed up — badly — by adding the wrong person styled 'JG' into a group chat. To borrow another logical principle, Hanlon's razor: Don't ascribe to malice that which can be otherwise explained by rank incompetence. And so it is here as well. In this instance, the offender should be fired posthaste, the administration should vow to do better — like not letting life-or-death military intel fall into unknown hands. And that ought to be the end of the matter. Many of the leading institutions in American public life do deserve our skepticism. Quite a few even deserve our outright scorn. But we cannot let that sad state of affairs melt our minds, either. Go outside, touch some grass, and remember that oftentimes the exciting 'alternative' explanation should be rejected for the simpler and more straightforward one. Josh Hammer's latest book is 'Israel and Civilization: The Fate of the Jewish Nation and the Destiny of the West.' This article was produced in collaboration with Creators Syndicate. @josh_hammer If it's in the news right now, the L.A. Times' Opinion section covers it. Sign up for our weekly opinion newsletter. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Los Angeles Times
27-03-2025
- Politics
- Los Angeles Times
The ‘Signalgate' theories may be entertaining, but they're probably not correct
The venerable logical principle known as Occam's razor, attributed to the 14th century English philosopher and theologian William of Ockham, asserts that when confronted with multiple possible explanations for a causal phenomenon, the simplest explanation is — absent persuasive evidence to the contrary — usually correct. Although hardly foolproof or comprehensive, Occam's razor has the benefit of simply making a lot of sense. The problem is that Occam's razor, as a general signpost to help make sense of the many things happening all around us, falls out of favor in an era when institutional trust is in free-fall. And so it is today: From organized religion to the military to the media to Wall Street to public health authorities to Congress and the Supreme Court, public polling across recent decades typically shows a very negative trendline when it comes to Americans' trust in virtually all of our major institutions. To be sure, much of this collapse in public trust has been self-inflicted. The Catholic Church sexual abuse scandal, which first came to light more than two decades ago, undermined public trust in institutional religion in general. Many legacy media brands have largely abandoned objectivity or political neutrality, acting instead as culture-warring crusaders. Wall Street did itself no favors with the 2008 global financial crisis — as well as the subsequent Troubled Asset Relief Program bailout. Public health officials utterly botched aspects of their handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, from lockdown rules to the virus' origins. Congress often seems incapable of doing anything other than hurl petty invectives across the aisle. And the Supreme Court is led by a chief justice who ironically exalts his tribunal's 'institutional integrity' so much that he ends up delegitimizing it. We live in a decidedly populist age, and much of our underlying angst is justified — indeed, it is sometimes righteous. Public authorities have routinely dropped the ball and made egregiously bad decisions. Media bias is very real — and so is congressional incompetence. Oftentimes, the American ruling class — as the late, great intellectual Angelo Codevilla famously described it in a 2010 essay — really does prioritize its own parochial interests over the supreme imperative of the common good. But there is a profound danger, always bubbling just below the surface, of anti-institutional sentiment going too far. Institutional dysfunction trains us to find or dream up arcane and irrational explanations for what we see in the world. At some point, Occam's razor gets turned on its head: The simplest or most logical explanation cannot possibly be true because that's what the powers that be want you to believe! Alternative explanations, often wildly elaborate and bearing little to no basis in factual reality, are proposed — sometimes in a circuitous manner, done in the ostensible name of 'just asking questions.' We saw this familiar script play out in the major domestic story of the past week: the 'Signalgate' group chat texting scandal that has taken the nation by storm. On Monday, the editor of the Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, reported that he had inexplicably been added to a high-level group chat earlier this month on the encrypted commercial messaging app Signal. The chat, comprising top-ranking Trump administration officials such as Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and national security advisor Michael Waltz, debated and discussed plans for U.S. strikes on the Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen (which have since come to fruition). They all seemed oblivious to Goldberg's presence. There are numerous glaring questions that must be asked from this most embarrassing error, perhaps chief among them: How in the world did Jeffrey Goldberg, who did more than any other journalist in America to sell Barack Obama's Iran nuclear deal one decade ago, get added to this chat? Waltz organized the Signal chat, and many have been calling for his head all week. Waltz, a four-time Bronze Star recipient who became the first Army Special Forces soldier ever elected to Congress, tends — like President Trump himself — to be more aggressive when it comes to confronting the terrorist Iranian regime and its sprawling web of regional proxies. Accordingly, there are actors on the left and the Tucker Carlson-aligned right who want to sideline Waltz. Some of these propagandists have thus speculated that perhaps Waltz intentionally leaked to Goldberg — or perhaps that Waltz served as a Goldberg source inside the Trump administration. But these ideologically driven explanations for 'Signalgate' are implausible. The simplest explanation, per Occam's razor, is that someone in Waltz's office messed up — badly — by adding the wrong person styled 'JG' into a group chat. To borrow another logical principle, Hanlon's razor: Don't ascribe to malice that which can be otherwise explained by rank incompetence. And so it is here as well. In this instance, the offender should be fired posthaste, the administration should vow to do better — like not letting life-or-death military intel fall into unknown hands. And that ought to be the end of the matter. Many of the leading institutions in American public life do deserve our skepticism. Quite a few even deserve our outright scorn. But we cannot let that sad state of affairs melt our minds, either. Go outside, touch some grass, and remember that oftentimes the exciting 'alternative' explanation should be rejected for the simpler and more straightforward one. Josh Hammer's latest book is 'Israel and Civilization: The Fate of the Jewish Nation and the Destiny of the West.' This article was produced in collaboration with Creators Syndicate. @josh_hammer
