I’m sure most adults have heard of the KISS principle. No, not the heavy metal band in clown makeup. The adage,’ keep it simple, stupid.’ It sounds good and it’s easy to remember. It is the modern day equivalent of Ockham’s Razor: entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem. Entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity. Now think about yourself and the people you associate with. In their day to day life do they adhere to the KISS principle? Or do they make all kinds of erroneous assumptions and use convoluted illogic to come to a more palatable conclusion?
To clarify, I’m not talking about systems that are so complex that it takes multiple Ph.D. and a computer to model them and still they fail. The whole point of things like climate models and economic models is to attempt to reduce the complexity to fewer variables in order to create predicitive tools. The problem with those models is that the best one can hope for is a close fit. There will always be too much information to sort through. In essence, those models are multi-variable differential equations. The rate of change for any one variable is predicated on it’s previous value in conjuction with all the other variables and their rates of change. That type of system is really too complex to grasp in any meaningful way. Still, it is in our nature to try. Order out of chaos and all that.
My point is that in each of our day to day lives, the number of variables we have to contend with really isn’t that high. And yet there are those out there that have to mull and rehash their social interactions multiple times over looking for some nuance that they may have missed. Forgetting for the moment that our memories are imperfect at best and easily rewritten to fit our point of view. There are those out there that feel fit to psychoanalyze the motives behind why their friends and family act in a way that they wouldn’t.
For example, Talleyrand and I have some common (female) acquantances who can’t fathom Talleyrand’s multiple…well I was going to say girlfriends, but I suppose that’s taking it a bit too far. They come to me making statements about his motives, his emotional state, and even going so far as to assign a psychological condition to describe his behavior. I’ve laughed in their faces and told them it’s not that complex. The simple answer is he (and I for that matter) have adapted our behavior. I tell these friends that Talleyrand gives these women what they desire most.
The problem with smart people is that they make things too complicated. They are dazzled by their own brilliance. I think a perfect example of this was Operation Market Garden during WWII. Old Bernie needed too many parts of his plan to go off without a hitch, and it cost him and the allies.
UPDATE: Here’s a link to the Pentagon’s recipe for brownies, all 26 pages.
