Resist the single-cause trap

Simple doesn’t always mean one cause — sometimes the simplest honest answer is 'multiple contributing factors.'

Why it works

The razor strips unnecessary assumptions, but causal complexity is not an unnecessary assumption when the evidence supports it. Human behavior, health, and social outcomes typically involve interacting causes; attributing them to a single factor is a simplification that sounds parsimonious but actually fits the evidence worse. True parsimony tracks the evidence, not the narrative convenience.

How to do it

1. When you find a compelling single cause, ask: what does this explanation leave unexplained?
2. List what additional factors would need to be true to account for all the observations.
3. Accept multi-cause explanations when the evidence for each factor is independently supported.
4. Distinguish 'this is the main factor' from 'this is the only factor' — the razor cuts the latter, not the former.

Evidence

Monocausal thinking is a recognized bias in reasoning about complex systems; multi-factorial causation is the norm in medicine, psychology, and social science. Treating single-factor explanations as parsimonious when they systematically misfit is a misapplication of the razor. (mechanistic)

This is a corrective practice for a specific misuse; it does not license unlimited causal expansion.

Common mistake

Congratulating yourself for applying Occam’s Razor while actually forcing a single-cause story onto data that demands several.