from Hacker News

We've lost our respect for complexity

by Wilsoniumite on 1/21/25, 8:26 AM with 62 comments

• by openrisk on 1/21/25, 10:44 AM

  The thing is, historically we never really had much respect for complexity.

  > We talk about complex subjects all the time. Medicine, politics, economics, sociology, morality and more

  For our entire history we have being talking about complex subjects we barely understood and, like proud primates, we were always very vocal and cocksure about our view points.

  We experienced two cultural revolutions, first in the world of ancient Greece, subsequently in the modern era of scientific enlightenment. One can think of the emergent scientific method as effectively learning to respect complexity. Being humble about assertions that cannot be validated again and again, in different conditions, by different parties etc.

  The tangible result of this new trait (respecting complexity) was pretty amazing. But only for a precious few domains. Our default mode, being 100% sure about things we have little clue about (who needs hallucinating AI when you've got humans), continues to be the prevalent one.

  Whats worse, we now have what has been called "the pretence of knowledge" [1]. We know that real knowledge is powerful, so why not pretend we have it when we actually don't? This leads to a random mix of (typically self-serving) opinions coupled to the superficial use of scientific tools. A pathology most visible precisely in the above list of really complex topics.

  The risk is that as the challenges of our own complex societies mount, we will undo also what we have achieved, and effectively go back to become stochastic parrots, unhinged from complex reality.

  [1] https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/1974/hay...

• by perrygeo on 1/21/25, 2:28 PM

  The rise of complexity, and its collapse, defines every civilization for which we have historical records. Given that our society seem hell-bent on repeating the pattern, I question whether we ever had respect for it. It seems that we have nothing but arrogance to proclaim "this time we'll get it right" as we layer on the next layer of complexity.

  [1] Joseph Tainter "The Collapse of Complex Societies"

• by BwackNinja on 1/21/25, 10:28 AM

  Complexity has always been less respected the more it is separated from the experiences of the average person; or more personally, your own experiences. Unfortunately, that's the very nature of complexity itself. Dependencies increase instead of decrease in the hopes of scaling, saving time and money, or even providing a slightly better product. As positive as those efforts sound, they also make the failure cases worse.

  The only people to respect with regards to complexity are those dealing with inherent complexity -- especially when they're building more digestible abstractions, and those working to reduce complexity due to having a substantial understand of it. It can be rather difficult to distinguish between inherent complexity and incidental complexity though.

• by rob74 on 1/21/25, 10:12 AM

  I largely agree with this post except for the reference to "juvenoia". Case in point: the new US administration doesn't contain a lot of terribly young people, but they have also thoroughly lost the respect for complexity. All those "deep state" bureaucrats who at best don't seem to do anything useful and at worst dare to contradict you? Fire them all!

• by somethingsome on 1/21/25, 11:02 AM

  Complexity is important when a subject at is core is complex, I'm mostly against complexity for the sake of complexity. Too many subjects are getting complex for the sake of it, or due to organic development.

  There is an even greater beauty than complexity when very complex subjects can be reduced to simpler ones without losing their power, it requires a greater understanding of complexity than what is usually seen.

  As an illustrative example : QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter, Feynman

• by nonrandomstring on 1/21/25, 10:47 AM

  A trillion dollar marketing industry condemns enquiry and threatens mild inconvenience as the terrible fate awaiting anyone who errs from the path of simplicity. The word "just" has a lot to answer for. "Just do it". "It just works". Complexity is an acquired taste. It is somewhat rebellious to celebrate and indulge in it.

• by 1GZ0 on 1/21/25, 10:21 AM

  I feel like "Complexity" is the wrong word here.

  Although I agree with the notion that deep knowledge of complex systems has decreased over the years, I'd argue that the problem isn't the lack of interest in gaining deeper knowledge that's the problem, nor a perceived lack of respect for expertise.

  I'd argue its more to do with the nature of how large codebases morph over time as they're retrofitted to do more usercases. Its a lot easy in the short term to just hack in the functionality you need into an existing codebase, instead of rewriting the entire thing from scratch every time. This comes at the cost of maintainability and leads to a lot of headaches in the long term, as systems that where never designed to work together clash in unexpected ways.

  I don't begrudge anyone for not wanted to dive into codebases like that.

• by metalman on 1/21/25, 11:37 AM

  There is a part in the Life of Brian, where Brian "helps"/intervenes in a complex assembly/manufacturing operation, which results,instantly, in chaos and destruction. The scripting and effort to film that short piece must have required a true understanding of complexity, and what happens when it isn't recognised and respected. Unfortunately, complexity, and the respect for profesionalism, is weaponised, to produce, mountains(litteral) of junk, that then has to be payed for once, and then again when it proves to be junk, and then a third time to get rid of, and fourth and fifth, pehaps to get strait.

• by DaveMcMartin on 1/21/25, 12:02 PM

  In academia, respect for complexity still exists, but industries prioritize simplicity to enable mass production, reduce costs, and make things easier for people to understand, remember, and use. That’s why logos are becoming flat, with simple shapes and colors, buildings are often bland rectangular boxes, and apps have fewer texts and buttons on each screen.

  As with almost everything, we need to find a balance between simplicity and complexity.

• by EncomLab on 1/21/25, 11:07 AM

  Folding Ideas is one of the best channels on YouTube- glad to see it brought up here!

• by amelius on 1/21/25, 11:09 AM

  In academia, people had respect for complexity.

  In industry, nobody seems to use big-O notation.

• by FrankWilhoit on 1/21/25, 10:24 AM

  It is not "complexity good" versus "complexity bad". It is all about legibility, and legibility emerges from how complexity is managed.

• by vbezhenar on 1/21/25, 11:26 AM

  I do not respect complexity. 99% of complexity is not necessary. I respect simplicity. Complexity appears naturally, there's nothing respectable about it, it's just the way world evolves. Simplicity takes lots of effort to achieve and even more effort to maintain.

  Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.

• by xnx on 1/21/25, 1:24 PM

  Seems like this might be the same as the current popular disdain for experts and being educated.

• by revskill on 1/21/25, 11:58 AM

  It is about the number of connections in a graph.

• by Painsawman123 on 1/21/25, 12:29 PM

  >That’s not been entirely without good reason, many things were promised then that have failed to materialize. From flying cars to world peace

  i mean, Flying cars has been a reality for quite some time now, they just go by another name, "helicopters".

• by ned99 on 1/21/25, 11:45 AM

  An idiot admires complexity, a genius admires simplicity - Terry Davis

• by Dalewyn on 1/21/25, 10:33 AM

  >We are constantly asking our brains to grasp at complex topics and distill down at least our own perception of them to something manageable.

  Considering "DON'T TREAD ON ME"[1] is a meme that goes back all the way to 1776, the human desire to simplify what is needlessly complicated is nothing new and certainly nothing unexpected even today. This is especially so for Joe Average who more than likely is simply way too busy already with more pressing affairs to daily life.

  >Now, when many may challenge that notion of consistent progress of the world toward a brighter future, letting somebody else do it just doesn’t seem so right.

  This too is "older than history"[2]. A common (misattributed?) quote from Mark Twain goes that "If you don't read the newspapers, you are uninformed. If you do read them, you are misinformed."[3]

  It has always been preferable to have a healthy appetite for critical thought and to be skeptical of everything. Critical thought is how you form your own opinions, your own beliefs, your own ideals and goals in life, your own identity. And indeed, the discipline of science is predicated on putting forth hypotheses and testing them; that is questioning how the world works and whether our current understanding stands up to questioning.

  What was ridiculous was the deference to higher authority without regard. Noone has the time nor capacity to question and understand everything, especially Joe Average, but to then fundamentally give up your own freedom of thought and defer it to "some group of people who would make it their life careers and ... trust them" is what was and is ridiculous. The widely derided NPC meme starts becoming less of a meme if you trust someone to tell you how to think. Around these parts we call that programming: Telling computers how to think and what to do.

  >we now live in a time ... that understanding the full complexity of every topic that might cross your path is not only possible, but somehow, expected.

  Personally as a millenial (age mid-30s), I grew up on a healthy course of being taught to think for myself. Essentially, that is a natural conclusion to being taught that we should strive to truly understand the world around us.

  >Still, clear answers don’t seem ahead of us

  The answer is actually simple: Use experts (not "experts" like some pundit on television or a political office holder, actual real experts out in the field who know their stuff and speak objectively) as a potential guide (not an authority!) towards striving to better understand the world around you.

  We quite literally have a limited capacity to care[4], we must pick and choose what we concern ourselves with even as we strive to understand. Logically then, we should first strive to understand the world around us because that's what is immediately relevant to our daily lives.

  Progressivism today cares so much about things that are faraway and irrelevant to your daily life, and because you have a limited capacity to care that leaves you unable to care for the people and things in your life. That is simply stupid.

  Understand the people around you, not some faceless entity on the other side of your continent/island or even the planet you hear on social media. Understand the society around you, not some construct you will probably never even travel to.

  Understand the world around you, your life, and you might realize that life and the world are actually pretty nice.

  [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_Tread_on_Me

  [2]: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OlderThanTheyThi...

  [3]: https://old.reddit.com/r/QuotesPorn/comments/exkeku/if_you_d...

  [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar's_number

• by vdjskshi on 1/22/25, 1:33 AM

  We're recreating a demon haunted world that will foster cargo cults. The algorithms we interact with are inscrutible, so we make up rules of thumb and assign agency where there is none. E.g. In 5 years there won't be a way to truly know how to minimize your personally-customized prices at the grocery store, but there will be tons of cargo cult opinions (put your phone in airplane mode, walk through iles 3 times before you pick up an item, pick up a generic version before the name brand, ...).

  Algorithms and AI are the new divine agents to appease with ritual.