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I've always thought that people underestimate the mental acuity needed to find simple truths within complex systems and to use them to achieve useful results.

I've always thought that people underestimate the mental acuity needed to find simple truths within complex systems and to use them to achieve useful results. Especially in academia, many professors, who are wedded to particular models, go so far as to dismiss simplicity without sufficient consideration. It was not always this way. Among the older philosophers, you can observe a strong affinity for simplicity. Figures like Pythagoras, Newton, Descartes, Archytas, and various Indian philosophers, such as Shankaracharya, strongly favored simplicity. Even practical statesmen such as Han Fei, Lee Kuan Yew, Chanakya, and others were able to distill simple yet powerful truths from complex situations. This is central to leadership and the effective organization of human activities. You can observe the same drive for simplicity in great engineering leaders like Rickover and Visveswaraya. Given more time, I believe I could make a very strong case for the power of an affinity for simplicity and its correlation with greatness in any field of activity. Simplicity is underrated (in practice).

Jakob 3y ago
Simplicity adds value not by denying complexity but by providing a means to navigate it. However it must be applied judiciously to ensure that the richness of the complex system is not lost. Complex systems are often more resilient to shocks. Complex models are often more robust, simple models can be misleading. The individuals you mention mastered complexity. What they did could be seen by us as simplicity retroactively. Something like Denning’s crane. Newton developed calculus, that was anything but simple at that time. I agree to use simplicity to decide, inform, lead. But great things tend to emerge from thinkers that can think through complexity and not oversimplify their own thinking.
- atomicnature 3y ago
  Yes, that is not untrue. However, when you talk implementation, a major part of operations is - "what can people understand and act upon in a coherent way". Your bottleneck to most system implementations is the processing capability of the people. Therefore, in practice, less accurate but simpler models end up performing better. Re: Newton - I am not denying complexity. I am simply saying recognising basic truths, honoring them to the extent to which they deserve, making them the foundation for all further activities/undertaking. For ex - Rickover dealt with super complicated projects, but how he dealt with them is based on utterly simple principles; so simple that people would outright reject them, until they see the results he achieved. One could say the same regarding Lee Kuan Yew's work.
cableshaft 3y ago
> Figures like Pythagoras, Newton, Descartes, Archytas, and various Indian philosophers, such as Shankaracharya, strongly favored simplicity. Easy to favor simplicity when the basics in your field hasn't been fully mapped out yet. Much harder to make a name for yourself when pretty much all the low-hanging (i.e. simple) fruit has been claimed already by people in the past. Most people probably feel they don't have much choice but to pursue more complex ideas nowadays as a result.
- atomicnature 3y ago
  What about Rickover? He was implementing nuclear energy to practical applications. You read Rickover's doing a job (https://govleaders.org/rickover.htm https://govleaders.org/rickover.htm), he emphasizes simpler concepts such as responsibility and individual initiative to drive complex technical projects. I've shown these ideas to many so-called well-educated college graduates, and they don't warm up to it. They say "processes" > "individual initiative". This is too old-school, too simple, blah, blah. I think people will learn only when you put them in charge of a complex undertaking to appreciate what simplicity means in leadership of complex projects.
  - SiempreViernes 3y ago
    Building the first naval reactors ever seems like the very epitome of working in a immature field?
    - atomicnature 3y ago
      The principle of responsibility and individual initiative - applies even today. The challenge is in different form today, there are new immature fields, but that doesn't make having simpler organising concepts outdated.
- trashtester 3y ago
  > Easy to favor simplicity when the basics in your field hasn't been fully mapped out yet. Partly this, and partly because average college professors are being compared to some of the greatest scholars of all time. Figures like Einstein or Feynman were able to simply inherently difficult/complex problems well into the 20th century, and similar people are surely doing the same today. But often a difficult problem needs to be understood the hard way before it can be simplified down to something that is easier to communicate.
voxl 3y ago
How do you not cringe at a comment that so matter-of-factly states that our modern researchers all have this assumed negative propensity that somehow the wisend researchers, thinkers, and leaders of the past did not have. You must be speaking of personal experience, because otherwise your comment is completely ridiculous. But if you are, you certainly have no personal experience with historical figures. So how can you judge a day-to-day interaction with the greatest hits of someone dead?
- atomicnature 3y ago
  Top modern researchers/practitioners do seem to value simplicity heavily, but can't say the same for most. The propensity for misuse of abstraction/models/data/theories is pretty high from what I've seen. That's my view. You are free to disagree! PS: It is always better to rely on older sources for illustrations, because they have lived their life fully and you have documentation of their lives + effects of their efforts. It is not a good idea to rely on living people to illustrate principles.
  - steppi 3y ago
    Largely, it seems top modern researchers are able to free themselves from many of the perverse incentives of the academic game. You might be surprised how many who have not reached such a level also value simplicity, but simply must play the game. It's very common to see a clear and simple (in the good sense) paper grow increasingly complex in response to reviewers demands, going through a sequence of one or more rejections before finally getting accepted.
    - atomicnature 3y ago
      I'm merely commenting on the output. Maybe a good number of people in academia do care about simplicity. Or it is simply that society is falsely incentivizing people to enter into these territories, when they should be doing something else.
- seanhunter 3y ago
  Yeah it's a very common generalisation. Modern researchers all think the same thing, people in the past used to think something different. "The days of old have turned to dust" as it says in the Epic of Gilgamesh (ie one of the earliest surviving works of literature includes a moan than things are not as good as they used to be).
marcosdumay 3y ago
Simplicity does surely survives better. But you clearly do have a biased picture on your head. That claim that current people value it less than ancient people is not only baseless, but quickly dismissable just by reading those genius you quote.
- atomicnature 3y ago
  Consider this argument: what % of people are in "academia" these days vs the previous centuries out of their own volition? Right now, there is an incentive to go into college, and it so happens that all sorts of people participate in the knowledge-creation process. And a bulk of the people participating in academia - are they really there for the sake of curiosity, to the pursuit of truth, etc? I'd bet that an individual in the past had less societal incentives to come into intellectual/theoretical areas and hash needless theories. So my argument is definitely not baseless (although - it is debatable)
  - seanhunter 3y ago
    I don't think that argument survives scrutiny. If you pick an arbitrary activity, the % of people these days that are doing that activity is gonig to be very different from previous centuries. That's just because the structure of society is very different from previous centuries. I don't think it's valid to try to draw any other inferences from there.
    - atomicnature 3y ago
      You are not even engaging with my argument, let alone "scrutinize" it :) To meaningfully engage, you must study the history of education systems, how it evolved, what was the situation of scholars in the past and now. If you study those things a bit more, then my argument may make more sense to you.
Bhilai 3y ago
I am not sure why people think of complexity as something bad or undesirable. Everything I can think is extremely complex and probably cannot be explained in simple terms without missing much of the context and beauty behind it. In my opinion, its not simplicity, its actually the complexity that adds beauty and meaning to everything.
- atomicnature 3y ago
  When it comes to experiencing things, complexity is good. Good music, beautiful nature, complex story, that's all nice. When it comes to getting things to work, to make things happen, to understanding things... our major bottleneck is the "size of human skull", your cognitive limits. Descartes gives the example of visualizing a chain made up of many links... at any point, you can only look at say, maximum 4-5 links, you can never see all the links at the same time. That is, in fact, it is impossible for a human to "see a whole chain"! You are "making it up", even with such a simple operation as "see". Therefore, due to such horrendous limits to cognition, you are forced to implement some sort of simplification mechanism. So the context of discussion is (2) not (1). The people interested in making things happen in the world, to obtain correct/useful/functional/practical viewpoints, tend to gravitate towards simplicity by necessity. There is no other option.
- lelanthran 3y ago
  > I am not sure why people think of complexity as something bad or undesirable. Everything I can think is extremely complex and probably cannot be explained in simple terms without missing much of the context and beauty behind it. It is possible for both things to be true. 1. complexity is bad and undesirable. 2. Complexity is unavoidable. See also: reality has a surprising amount of detail, http://johnsalvatier.org/blog/2017/reality-has-a-surprising-amount-of-detail http://johnsalvatier.org/blog/2017/reality-has-a-surprising-...

Jakob 3y ago

Simplicity adds value not by denying complexity but by providing a means to navigate it. However it must be applied judiciously to ensure that the richness of the complex system is not lost. Complex systems are often more resilient to shocks. Complex models are often more robust, simple models can be misleading. The individuals you mention mastered complexity. What they did could be seen by us as simplicity retroactively. Something like Denning’s crane. Newton developed calculus, that was anything but simple at that time. I agree to use simplicity to decide, inform, lead. But great things tend to emerge from thinkers that can think through complexity and not oversimplify their own thinking.

atomicnature 3y ago
Yes, that is not untrue. However, when you talk implementation, a major part of operations is - "what can people understand and act upon in a coherent way". Your bottleneck to most system implementations is the processing capability of the people. Therefore, in practice, less accurate but simpler models end up performing better. Re: Newton - I am not denying complexity. I am simply saying recognising basic truths, honoring them to the extent to which they deserve, making them the foundation for all further activities/undertaking. For ex - Rickover dealt with super complicated projects, but how he dealt with them is based on utterly simple principles; so simple that people would outright reject them, until they see the results he achieved. One could say the same regarding Lee Kuan Yew's work.

cableshaft 3y ago

> Figures like Pythagoras, Newton, Descartes, Archytas, and various Indian philosophers, such as Shankaracharya, strongly favored simplicity. Easy to favor simplicity when the basics in your field hasn't been fully mapped out yet. Much harder to make a name for yourself when pretty much all the low-hanging (i.e. simple) fruit has been claimed already by people in the past. Most people probably feel they don't have much choice but to pursue more complex ideas nowadays as a result.

atomicnature 3y ago
What about Rickover? He was implementing nuclear energy to practical applications. You read Rickover's doing a job (https://govleaders.org/rickover.htm https://govleaders.org/rickover.htm), he emphasizes simpler concepts such as responsibility and individual initiative to drive complex technical projects. I've shown these ideas to many so-called well-educated college graduates, and they don't warm up to it. They say "processes" > "individual initiative". This is too old-school, too simple, blah, blah. I think people will learn only when you put them in charge of a complex undertaking to appreciate what simplicity means in leadership of complex projects.
- SiempreViernes 3y ago
  Building the first naval reactors ever seems like the very epitome of working in a immature field?
  - atomicnature 3y ago
    The principle of responsibility and individual initiative - applies even today. The challenge is in different form today, there are new immature fields, but that doesn't make having simpler organising concepts outdated.
trashtester 3y ago
> Easy to favor simplicity when the basics in your field hasn't been fully mapped out yet. Partly this, and partly because average college professors are being compared to some of the greatest scholars of all time. Figures like Einstein or Feynman were able to simply inherently difficult/complex problems well into the 20th century, and similar people are surely doing the same today. But often a difficult problem needs to be understood the hard way before it can be simplified down to something that is easier to communicate.

voxl 3y ago

How do you not cringe at a comment that so matter-of-factly states that our modern researchers all have this assumed negative propensity that somehow the wisend researchers, thinkers, and leaders of the past did not have. You must be speaking of personal experience, because otherwise your comment is completely ridiculous. But if you are, you certainly have no personal experience with historical figures. So how can you judge a day-to-day interaction with the greatest hits of someone dead?

atomicnature 3y ago
Top modern researchers/practitioners do seem to value simplicity heavily, but can't say the same for most. The propensity for misuse of abstraction/models/data/theories is pretty high from what I've seen. That's my view. You are free to disagree! PS: It is always better to rely on older sources for illustrations, because they have lived their life fully and you have documentation of their lives + effects of their efforts. It is not a good idea to rely on living people to illustrate principles.
- steppi 3y ago
  Largely, it seems top modern researchers are able to free themselves from many of the perverse incentives of the academic game. You might be surprised how many who have not reached such a level also value simplicity, but simply must play the game. It's very common to see a clear and simple (in the good sense) paper grow increasingly complex in response to reviewers demands, going through a sequence of one or more rejections before finally getting accepted.
  - atomicnature 3y ago
    I'm merely commenting on the output. Maybe a good number of people in academia do care about simplicity. Or it is simply that society is falsely incentivizing people to enter into these territories, when they should be doing something else.
seanhunter 3y ago
Yeah it's a very common generalisation. Modern researchers all think the same thing, people in the past used to think something different. "The days of old have turned to dust" as it says in the Epic of Gilgamesh (ie one of the earliest surviving works of literature includes a moan than things are not as good as they used to be).

marcosdumay 3y ago

Simplicity does surely survives better. But you clearly do have a biased picture on your head. That claim that current people value it less than ancient people is not only baseless, but quickly dismissable just by reading those genius you quote.

atomicnature 3y ago
Consider this argument: what % of people are in "academia" these days vs the previous centuries out of their own volition? Right now, there is an incentive to go into college, and it so happens that all sorts of people participate in the knowledge-creation process. And a bulk of the people participating in academia - are they really there for the sake of curiosity, to the pursuit of truth, etc? I'd bet that an individual in the past had less societal incentives to come into intellectual/theoretical areas and hash needless theories. So my argument is definitely not baseless (although - it is debatable)
- seanhunter 3y ago
  I don't think that argument survives scrutiny. If you pick an arbitrary activity, the % of people these days that are doing that activity is gonig to be very different from previous centuries. That's just because the structure of society is very different from previous centuries. I don't think it's valid to try to draw any other inferences from there.
  - atomicnature 3y ago
    You are not even engaging with my argument, let alone "scrutinize" it :) To meaningfully engage, you must study the history of education systems, how it evolved, what was the situation of scholars in the past and now. If you study those things a bit more, then my argument may make more sense to you.

Bhilai 3y ago

I am not sure why people think of complexity as something bad or undesirable. Everything I can think is extremely complex and probably cannot be explained in simple terms without missing much of the context and beauty behind it. In my opinion, its not simplicity, its actually the complexity that adds beauty and meaning to everything.

atomicnature 3y ago
When it comes to experiencing things, complexity is good. Good music, beautiful nature, complex story, that's all nice. When it comes to getting things to work, to make things happen, to understanding things... our major bottleneck is the "size of human skull", your cognitive limits. Descartes gives the example of visualizing a chain made up of many links... at any point, you can only look at say, maximum 4-5 links, you can never see all the links at the same time. That is, in fact, it is impossible for a human to "see a whole chain"! You are "making it up", even with such a simple operation as "see". Therefore, due to such horrendous limits to cognition, you are forced to implement some sort of simplification mechanism. So the context of discussion is (2) not (1). The people interested in making things happen in the world, to obtain correct/useful/functional/practical viewpoints, tend to gravitate towards simplicity by necessity. There is no other option.
lelanthran 3y ago
> I am not sure why people think of complexity as something bad or undesirable. Everything I can think is extremely complex and probably cannot be explained in simple terms without missing much of the context and beauty behind it. It is possible for both things to be true. 1. complexity is bad and undesirable. 2. Complexity is unavoidable. See also: reality has a surprising amount of detail, http://johnsalvatier.org/blog/2017/reality-has-a-surprising-amount-of-detail http://johnsalvatier.org/blog/2017/reality-has-a-surprising-...