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Related, in today's Farnam Street email, he linked to an article examining the psychology behind why humans prefer complex things to the simple[0]. It's especi
by tinymollusk 9y ago
Related, in today's Farnam Street email, he linked to an article examining the psychology behind why humans prefer complex things to the simple[0].
It's especially interesting because most other psychological biases appear to be the result of a mental short-cut. Perhaps we see something complex and mistakenly infer the preconditions were complex, and that somehow makes it more valuable.
An especially interesting quotation, relevant to this forum is in that article, by a sportswriter: "Most geniuses—especially those who lead others—prosper not by deconstructing intricate complexities but by exploiting unrecognized simplicities."
[0] https://www.farnamstreetblog.com/2018/01/complexity-bias/ https://www.farnamstreetblog.com/2018/01/complexity-bias/
- CM30 9y agoWonder if ego has anything to do with it as well? Perhaps for some people, they feel 'complexity' makes them look better, even if the simple solution would better in every rational way. Then again, it could just be boredom. The more complex solution also usually has a bunch of 'novel' issues to solve, and solving those can be a lot more enjoyable for certain individuals than doing things the reasonable way.
- tinymollusk 9y agoYeah, this creates some sort of "moat of knowledge" that increases status if you make something easy look difficult. Also could make someone appear to be less replaceable ("we would have to think about something that looks hard to replace person XYZ!"). There's also the danger of overfitting when building the mental model or process.