Occam's Razor

Heisenberg said:

Do any of you utilize Occam's razor in your jobs? How about when dealing with others? I find Occam's razor to be much less reliable when dealing with situations involving human emotions, indeed it is meant for equal competing theories of fact, but still very helpful in understanding interpersonal relationships. When trying to figure out what motivates others or explain behavior, you can still identify the points at which you make assumptions, which helps you evaluate the validity of your assessment.

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I extensively use a derivative of it. I am an IT consultant, so I deal with any number of complex problems daily. When faced with a service issue, I start diagnosing the simplest and most easily repairable cause of a malfunction. Your computer not working? Check to see if it's plugged in first. That is an easy example, but the same thing applies for much more complex things like servers or backbone routers. The more complex anything is, the more time you will save by not misdiagnosing a problem. Occams Razor doesn't work well with human interaction because it implies a logical methodology. Humans by nature are not logical.

In those cases, I regrettably have to fall back on Hanlon's Razor. "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity."