Occam’s razor does not cut here

For years my friend Bernard-Henri Not-Levy has been railing that  Occam’s Razor—the principle that the simplest explanation is probably the best one — does not work in the Philippines. Even when it is demonstrably true,  it gets no respect. He is terribly disapp-ointed that no one has disagreed with him. Now he goes around railing that we fail the Turing Test, and if no one has disagreed with him, it may be because no one is sure what the Turing Test is.

Some weeks ago, to his great joy, Bernard-Henri found himself in a live demonstration of the fallacy of Occam’s Razor in these islands.

Bernard-Henri was taking his mother and her friend, both of them octogenarians, to a theatrical production of Tuesdays With Morrie.

 Now  taking one’s old mother to a play about a dying old professor may not  seem like a bright idea, but Bernard-Henri thought his mom would enjoy it. He was on his way to his mother’s house when he received a text message from his sister telling him to proceed to the hospital instead.

 Their mother had fallen and bruised her arm; she was alright, but they wanted to make sure nothing was broken. The play date was off; the octogenarian friend went to see it with her daughter.

Having already visited a hospital that day, Bernard-Henri decided to visit a friend at another hospital. This friend, a photographer, had called Bernard-Henri the previous day from inside an ambulance. The ambulance was delivering him from Baguio City to a hospital in Manila.

The urgency was due to the discovery of an aneurysm in his brain. At the time of the phone call, the photographer was in the  ambulance in the drive-through of a fastfood in Pampanga, ordering a transfat and triglycerides sandwich. After all, an ambulance is the safest place in which to consume cholesterol; if his heart stopped, the paramedics could zap it back to life.

At the hospital, the photographer told Bernard-Henri how he came to be diagnosed with an aneurysm. The photographer was on vacation in Sagada when he started feeling unwell. He thought of consulting a physician, but his friends suggested he see a local shaman instead. The shaman declared that his physical problem was really of a spiritual nature.

 For the remedy he prescribed a cañao—a ritual involving the sacrifice of an animal, in this case a chicken. Then the photographer was pronounced OK.

The following day the photographer was feeling better—so much better that he went on a long hike, from which he returned exhausted and verging on collapse. His friends looked him over and decided that he must’ve unwittingly offended some spirit. To appease it they would—yes—have another cañao. Body count at this point: two chickens.

This is one of those stories in which no one ever thinks to lie down and get some rest. The photographer promptly went on another long walk to take pictures of old houses. He wandered into a house that seemed to have been abandoned. That evening he mentioned the abandoned house to his friends, who feared that the house was cursed. Once again, the local shaman was consulted. He declared that the house was a place of healing, but to seal the deal they would hold another cañao, this time with a pig. By now the photographer’s health condition had caused a veritable massacre of animals.

Despite the spiritual reassurances, the photographer finally bestirred himself to visit a hospital. Where a CAT scan detected the aneurysm, leading to his swift return to Manila. Where doctors declared that it was not an aneurysm that was troubling him, but a benign tumor which had to be taken out.

Just as the photographer finished telling his story, Bernard-Henri received a text message from his mother’s octogenarian friend. She and her daughter were watching the play when, in the final scene, the actor playing the dying old professor fell off his wheelchair and lay on the stage. The spectators thought it was part of the play, even when the other actor turned to the audience and uttered that theatrical cliche, “Is there a doctor in the house?”

On his way out of the hospital, Bernard-Henri ran into his neighbor, a stage actor, coming out of the Emergency Room. The actor told him that he had been in the middle of a play when his fellow actor fell down. Yes, this was the same actor Bernard-Henri had just heard about, the one  who had said the line that was not in the text of Tuesdays With Morrie.

I don’t know how sharp Occam’s Razor is around here, but clearly strange things happen so that columnists can have something to write about.

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