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> But the larger consequence is that if you’re smart the world doesn’t seem very complicated. This might seem obvious, but the obvious thought is rather differe
by thunk 16y ago
> But the larger consequence is that if you’re smart the world doesn’t seem very complicated. This might seem obvious, but the obvious thought is rather different. The obvious thought is: The world doesn’t seem complicated to smart people. But this isn’t what smart people actually think. They think the world isn’t complicated, period.
Woah, woah, woah. "The world" is a very large thing indeed. You'd have to be pretty stupid to think "it isn't complicated, period." Simplifying insight is often hard won. And some things are just irreducibly complex. To think otherwise smells like Dunning-Krueger.
- LaPingvino 16y agoGive me an example of an irreducibly complex thing :)
- Estragon 16y agoYou.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- ovi256 16y ago* The Belgian question. * Quantum mechanics. * The sovereign debt problem.
- pwhelan 16y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irreducible_complexity#Response_of_the_scientific_community http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irreducible_complexity#Response... Also, I would think that exptime-complete problems we could call irreducibly complex :) My first thoughts strayed to computability theory though.
- thunk 16y agoOh yeah, that's why the phrase "irreducibly complex" popped into my mind. Whoops. Just to be clear, I definitely wasn't referring to the intelligent design argument. I meant the phrase strictly in the "make everything as simple as possible, but no simpler" sense. The simplest possible correct explanation of some things is still extremely complicated.
- khafra 16y agoNext month's weather.
- kylemathews 16y agoWhy people hate.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- pwhelan 16y agoI think Bertrand Russell put it best when he wrote, "[t]he fundamental cause of trouble in the world today is that the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt." I have found the smarter (and in the majority, not all) someone is, the more likely that person sees the complexity of things.
- raimondious 16y agoThat reminds me of Richard Feynman, who tried to keep a list of everything he didn't understand. Smart people pay more attention to what they don't know than what they do.
- timwiseman 16y ago"Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance." Confuscius
- Gormo 16y agoI think there is a difference between "complex" and "complicated". It might require more effort to delve into the details of complexity, but to the extent that you can recognize where the effort needs to be applied to develop a reliable understanding, it's not "complicated" in the sense of being incomprehensible. The author mentioned that "normal" people will often presume that someone who sounds complicated is smart, but I've seen the converse bias among smart people: they expect things to make sense, so when an explanation seems too convoluted, they tend to dismiss it as bullshit.