system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
When applying Occam's Razor, how does one know what the "simplest solution" is?

For example, regarding the Theory of Evolution (which I believe, but I just needed an example)... The idea that over eons animals have various mutations that over time slowly change the organism ever so slightly, generation after generation, weeding out those mutations that don't help an organism survive until it finally becomes the animal we see today.... or God created a creature that fits perfectly in its environment. When I word the two options that way, the God option seems the "simplest solution". I never really understood how someone decides what the simplest solution is.
gpt
The explanatory economy Occam's Razor aims at is about economy of assumption-making. It's not about which explanation can be articulated in the simplest terms, or most briefly. "God did it" is a very simple explanation, but Occam's Razor still favors the theory of evolution, by comparison, because it's more epistemically modest, if you will. It explains the phenomena it aims to explain (species differentiation, etc) in naturalistic terms. Its assumptions are humble, based merely on the biological evidence around us. Whereas with "God did it", that supernatural assumption is a mighty big one. It's simpler, yes, but it's not more economical in epistemic terms, because one would have colossal difficulty in establishing God's existence in the first place.