The Cult of Complexity
Isn’t it odd how much educated people enjoy complexity? It is as if mastering intricate details, which people outside their field do not know, leaves them with a unique feeling of competence and self-worth — even if their solutions are in fact far inferior to much simpler ones.
I’m talking about the programmer who builds an ivory tower of a beautiful, modular, readable, elegant code to handle a particular problem even though that problem could be made to disappear by fixing something further upstream — thus making the ivory tower completely superfluous and in reality a net cost in maintenance overhead.
I am talking about the nutritionist who develops the perfect meal plan with intricate meal timing, a complete stack of supplements, complex meals with all sorts of food items, and macro nutrients measured down to the decimal — even though the species-appropriate diet for humans, the carnivore diet, could be construed as a single meal of steaks and eggs each day and this would offer better nutrition and better performance.
I am talking about the investment advisor who tries to time the market, pick stocks, skew his portfolio towards macro trends, follow interest rates, and optimise tax payments — even though he could just buy and hold a broad market portfolio at a fraction of the cost, no time investment, and probably higher long-term returns (especially if he realises that Bitcoin is the true market portfolio).
These examples remind me of Elon Musk saying: “The greatest mistake engineers make is optimizing something that shouldn’t be there in the first place”.
This is spot on and it applies much more broadly than to engineers. It feels like a fundamental principle that separates humanity into two camps: The optimizers and the simplifiers.
The optimizers take for granted the structures that already exist and look for ways to expand on them. They do not question prevailing dogma, but accept them and go out into the world with the goal of applying what someone else has taught them.
The simplifiers have an aversion towards unnecessary complexity. They look for ways to remove rather than add to. They view prevailing dogma as hypotheses to be tested and challenged, not taken as gospel. They look for fundamental strategies that will make optimization irrelevant and superfluous.
I belong to the latter category, and I consider the optimisers a Cult of Complexity; a group of people held together by a need for being taught things and a desire to feel competent at these things — even if, viewed in the proper light, these skills are completely and utterly useless.
The Cult of Complexity is not open-minded, except to ideas that add rather than subtract. They do not like the idea that counting macros is necessary only when eating a diet not fit for humans. They do not like the idea that they could achieve better investment returns without following world news. They do not like the idea that instead of building a beautiful new ivory tower, they can create more value by tearing down a broken existing one.
The Cult of Complexity likes unnecessary difficulty in an inaccessible field. It makes them feel capable and superior to those outside; it gives them a sense of worth. They do not look for the straightest path, but the most convoluted one. They do not simplify ideas to make them accessible, they complicate them to make them seem arcane.
The so-called “experts” usually belong to the Cult of Complexity. They are, in fact, its masters. By being at the top of the hierarchy of mastering unnecessary complexity, they get to dictate truth in this field to outsiders. By insisting on the necessity of complexity, they try to make knowledge inaccessible. This creates a moat, a barrier to entry, that gives them a monopoly — a valuable position so long as people do not question whether all this complexity is really necessary or whether it rests on a foundation of evasion.