Friday, March 9, 2018

Close Shaves and Hot Air

I had reason the other day to wander over to the website of my internet provider (letusatrandomshutdownyouraccess.com), where curiosity led me to segue over to their Help page. I decided to investigate ”How to Restart Your Xfinity Wireless Gateway (aka: WiFi Router)." There are, I learned, two ways to do so: The Manual Restart and The Remote Restart. Here are the respective instructions:

To perform a manual restart:

1—Shut down the device you are using to connect to the Internet (e.g., a computer, laptop, smartphone, tablet, etc.)

2—Unplug your Wireless Gateway, modem or router from the electrical outlet and leave it unplugged for at least 10 seconds.

3—Plug the power cord back into the electrical outlet. Wait 30 seconds, then turn your device back on.

To Remotely Restart the Wireless Gateway via the XFINITY My Account App:

1—Download the app from Apple iTunes or Google Play; you can also search your mobile device's app store for "XFINITY My Account."

2—Sign in using your XFINITY username and tap Internet at the bottom of the home screen.
Note: If you forgot your username or password, you may find it on the Password Reset page.

3—Tap Restart device on the XFINITY Internet screen and tap it again to initiate the restart process for your Wireless Gateway. This process takes about five minutes to complete.
XFINITY Internet screen shows a Restart Device option under Support.
You will see a message confirming that a restart signal was sent to your Wireless Gateway.

4—If your device (Gateway, modem or router) successfully restarted, tap Yes to exit. If your restart was unsuccessful, tap No to display a page providing you with additional resources.

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In the 14th Century, William of Ockham (or Occam) formulated the philosophical principle that became known as Occam’s (or Ockham’s) Razor, or the Law of Parsimony. It is basically an instruction on how to approach the solving of a problem. There are multitudinous ways to express the reasoning; here are a few from the Web:

One should not multiply entities beyond necessity (Entia non sunt multiplicanda sine necessitate);

Plurality should not be assumed without necessity;

When presented with competing hypothetical answers to a problem, one should select the one that makes the fewest assumptions;

When you have two competing theories that make exactly the same predictions, the simpler one is the better.

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It should be noted once again that Occam’s Razor offers an approach to an answer, not a guarantee of the answer. In other words, start with the simplest explanation and run with it until necessity (that is, more evidence) demands a re-think. It is the way that crime novels are built; suspect the most obvious person, until a new piece of evidence rules him out—and so on to the next most obvious person, until . . . . 

Occam’s Razor is not only the logical way to approach an existing problem, but is also a valuable tool to use in deciding future action. For example: When I wish to go shopping at a certain supermarket, I have two routes (of almost equal lengths) that I can take. It thus becomes a question of splitting hairs which route my whim of the day will decide on (and it would fruitless for someone else to claim, in retrospect, which route I did take, absent further evidence). However, my future action will (most likely) not be a toss-up if I have either a letter to mail or a bank deposit to make. If the former, I most likely would go by way of Ford Avenue and Route 1 (because I would pass 3 mailboxes on my side of the road); if the latter, I most likely would go by way of Main Street and St. Georges Avenue (because I would pass my bank on my side of the road). Almost certainly the Law of Parsimony would be followed here. (Especially if one is thoughtful—or lazy.)

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Which brings us back to re-starting our modem.

Which procedure does Occam’s Razor suggest as the most logical way of going about the business? 
  1. Getting out of one’s chair, pulling the power cord from the back of the modem (or, at the other end, from the wall), and plugging the cord back in after waiting a few seconds, or 
  2. Downloading an app, signing in to one’s account, tapping on one’s remote device twice, waiting 5 minutes, then tapping Yes or No, whether the restart was successful?

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The latter procedure is an example of a modern-day Heath Robinson (for UK readers) or Rube Goldberg (for US readers) approach to accomplishing a task: How to do simple things in the hardest way possible.

Heath Robinson:


Rube Goldberg:


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So what does all this have to do with our present-day conspiracy-mongers? Without citing any specific examples (you can supply your own) of the mind-boggling pretzel twists of their convoluted reasonings, I invite you to remember “Entia non sunt multiplicanda sine necessitate.”

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Speaking of which, you might prefer to resort to one of these to dry your hair. 



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