The mouths of babes

Occam's razor has been widely debated, but nothing throws a monkey wrench in that theory as the mind of a child. For example when I was a wee lad I was sitting in the back of my parent's car watching my father grow impatient with a traffic light. My dad was never one to show up anywhere on time so he would often get disgruntled with anything that stood in his way of arriving to his destination. He would often display his anger by yelling at traffic lights.

My four year old reasoning ability made the assumption that since no adult would do something so foolish as to yell at an inanimate object I figured that there must be a little man in the traffic light that responds to drivers impatience. He was kind of like the guy that turned the light off in the fridge.

This belief went on for a while until one day I asked my folks if I could meet this little chap who operated stop lights. Upon hearing this I believe my parents wanted to drop me off at the nearest street corner and keep on driving.

I was reminded of this incident on Father's Day. I asked my dad who the idiot was really was. He just smiled and replied "everybody should raise a smart ass."

"Simpler theories are, other things being equal, generally better than more complex ones" - William Ockham