[HN Gopher] Decomplication: How to Find Simple Solutions to "Har...
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Decomplication: How to Find Simple Solutions to "Hard" Problems
(2016)
Author : WA
Score : 50 points
Date : 2021-10-04 09:15 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nateliason.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nateliason.com)
| msla wrote:
| How do you cure cancer? Well, cancer is a complex disease, made
| of cells which are nominally "yours" but which are actively
| trying to proliferate as much as possible, causing knock-on
| effects...
|
| Or, in the words of this article, "BULLSHIT! Just kill the cancer
| cells while leaving the healthy cells alive! Simple! Anything
| beyond that is artificial complexity! DA-EPOCH-R? DAE
| overcomplicated BuLLshiT! I know best!"
|
| The kind of over-simplification this article promotes leads
| directly to outcomes like Steve Jobs fruit-curing himself into an
| early grave because he thought he'd outsmarted a kind of cancer
| that would have been pretty damn treatable had he had an ounce of
| humility.
| gpderetta wrote:
| every problem has a solution that is simple, elegant and wrong.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| Some people call them "silver bullets": appealing illusions
| that problems may be more manageable than they are.
| Unfortunately, many silver bullets per problem can be
| formulated. They are considered one of the nourishing of
| populism.
|
| You want a metal-to-be-defined bullet against them?
| Education. So one gets used to meet problems that look simple
| but reveal their difficulty once you tackle them.
| drooby wrote:
| Huh? The author specifically says organic chemistry is actually
| complex.
| theknocker wrote:
| This is the kind of thing a certain type of person is incapable
| of understanding because the media has convinced them that the
| world is so inscrutably complex that you _have_ to appeal to
| authority (i.e. the media) to know _anything._
| munificent wrote:
| Today I learned that being a human with actual psychology and
| living in the modern world is "artificial complexity" and that if
| I would just stop that all of my problems would have simple (but
| no easier) solutions.
|
| Every normal human understands that "how do I lose weight?" has
| an implied "while being a normal human with impulses, desires,
| limited time and willpower, who also has many other goals they
| are trying to simultaneously satisfy". _That_ problem _is_
| fundamentally complex and literally shaming people ( "then you
| have no one to blame for failure but yourself") for being a human
| in society is counterproductive and harmful.
|
| Practically every overweight or underfinanced person in the world
| _already_ has a rich fount of shame for those attributes because
| society keeps telling them it 's their fault and that shame is _a
| source of complexity when it comes to solving the problem._
| wilburTheDog wrote:
| It sounds you're saying the article was oversimplifying complex
| problems because in the real world it's not so easy to just eat
| less/better and move more to loose weight. I think you may be
| missing the distinction he was making between simple and easy.
| I think fundamentally the problem of loosing weight is not
| particularly complex[1]. But for many people it is quite hard
| to do. We may have psychological issues with choosing the right
| foods, we may have other things we want or need to do instead
| of exercising, there could be many things that make it hard to
| do the things we need to to be healthy. And because it's hard
| for us we are vulnerable to someone selling us an 'easy'
| solution.
|
| Of course, solving our psychological issues, or finding the
| time or willpower to exercise, or making the money to buy
| healthy food or the time to cook it are all different problems.
| And those problems can be quite complex.
|
| 1. This recent HN discussion goes into it in more detail.
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28597975
| munificent wrote:
| I understand the distinction between simple and easy. Digging
| a pool in your back yard is simple. It's not easy. (The
| author is incorrect about running marathons. Running a
| marathon is complex.)
|
| _> I think fundamentally the problem of loosing weight is
| not particularly complex._
|
| My point is that any definition of "fundamental" in this
| sentence that discards the essential humanity and cultural
| context of the person losing weight ends up with a "problem"
| that is in no _meaningful, actionable_ way based in reality.
|
| The fact that it is a real living breathing human who has a
| life and a day job who is trying to lose weight _is essential
| complexity._
|
| Arguing otherwise is akin to saying that putting an astronaut
| on the moon is simple: just fire a ballistic missile at it.
| Oh, what, the astronaut needs oxygen, hydration, and can only
| handle a certain amount of acceleration before turning into a
| reddish paste? Well, that's just "artificial" complexity and
| it's their fault for having a body that is so poorly
| engineered.
| decebalus1 wrote:
| > What if we asked: "how do you manage your finances?"
|
| > These problems are complex and you need a monumental amount of
| information to get them right.
|
| > Bullshit.
|
| Exactly. Just stop being poor. It's such a simple solution to a
| 'hard' problem. Not being poor gives you access to 'paying
| someone' to make it easier to further stop you from being poor.
| Just break the cycle and stop being poor! Simple
| a_wild_dandan wrote:
| This article reminds me of the 80/20 rule: 80% of the result is
| achieved with 20% of the effort. You might not need the result's
| last 20%. Skip that excruciating, complicated 80% effort to get
| it.
|
| Coffee is a good example for me. I like a decent cup, or a
| drinkable espresso beverage. So I bought a cheap, good condition
| Gaggia Classic Pro espresso machine; a quality hand grinder; and
| an AeroPress. Learned to operate all 3. Boom, decent coffee &
| espresso.
|
| Can I crush tasting competitions or make fancy latte art? Nah.
| Being "80% of a barista" is fine to me. I don't need to spend ten
| large on equipment and hundreds (thousands?) of hours becoming
| 20% more of an expert. I'm having fun, don't spend $15/day on
| coffee, and my family enjoys the result. That'll do, pig. That'll
| do.
|
| Does this rule apply to surgery or financial security systems?
| Hope not. But you get the idea. I make coffee and Folgers it
| ain't. Maybe keeping "good enough" and the 80/20 rule in mind
| could simplify our lives.
| pddpro wrote:
| > Does this rule apply to surgery or financial security
| systems?
|
| There are, in fact, places in the world where people die of
| relatively simple diseases and infections. I should think that
| a person with just 1-2 year of elementary medical knowledge
| armed with WHO's Essential Medications would undoubtedly save
| more than 80% of lives in those areas.
| chousuke wrote:
| I'm pretty similar with coffee; all you really need is a decent
| grinder and reasonable control over water temperature, and
| immersion brews (like the Aeropress) are really hard to
| completely screw up, so you can focus on buying good quality
| coffee and on experiencing the variety in flavours.
|
| While I've managed to avoid an expensive espresso addiction, I
| do still do pourovers every once in a while even though I'm not
| that good at them because they're just fun to do, and I can
| totally understand people putting tons of money and effort into
| perfecting their coffee experience.
| z3t4 wrote:
| How to be an successful entrepreneur - sell something people want
|
| How to be a successful engineer - fix problems people are willing
| to pay for
|
| There you have it
| mym1990 wrote:
| I am not sure if this is sarcasm but both of your statements
| imply that success has to be related to profit/money. I think
| that is deeply flawed.
| trabant00 wrote:
| You can take any activity and break it down into extremely large
| number of parts that interact with each other in complex ways.
|
| Let's take handwriting for example. There are a lot of anatomy:
| muscles, joints as pivots and bones as levers, a lot of physics
| in a ball pen and the manufacture of pens can explained to the
| chemistry of plastics and beyond. Ink absorption in paper depends
| on how many factors?
|
| Now imagine a product, book, course, whatever, that expands on
| the above paragraph in an effort to teach you how to write. As
| absurd as it sounds that's the recipe for a lot of commercial
| stuff out there. Technically correct in describing things but
| absolutely zero help for the task.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| This is... just plain wrong.
|
| Example: sleep. Insomnia has a history which predates
| Shakespeare.
|
| https://muse.jhu.edu/article/266971
|
| In fact sleep patterns used to be different. It was normal to
| wake up for an hour or two in the middle of the night. But people
| went to sleep much earlier - typically around 7-8pm, woke up for
| an hour or two about four hours later, and went back to sleep
| again.
|
| _In spite of this_ insomnia was a known problem.
|
| https://www.medievalists.net/2016/01/how-did-people-sleep-in...
|
| So clearly going back to this pattern won't necessarily make
| everyone sleep better. And so "modernity" is not the issue, and
| the problem does not have a simple solution.
|
| Likewise weight loss. Telling overweight people to eat less is
| like telling an alcoholic to drink less, or a depressed person to
| cheer up. It's pointless, silly, and naive and it won't work.
|
| The real issue with weight loss is a combination of motivation
| and psychological reprogramming, with some addictive elements,
| plus education about nutrition. Also peer pressure. And access to
| healthy vs unhealthy foods.
|
| There may also be underlying medical issues related to
| metabolism. (And - ironically - sleep patterns also make a
| difference.)
|
| Again, it's not a simple problem.
|
| This is not to say that tech non-solutions are better. But the
| idea that you can reduce issues that millions struggle with daily
| to a simple motivational sentence isn't any more realistic.
|
| Or helpful.
| hollosi wrote:
| Most people don't have metabolic issues, yet steadily gaining
| weight.
|
| South Korea vs. North Korea clearly shows the effect of food
| availability. Same genetics.
|
| No one said the solution was easy, only that the solution was
| simple. But very hard.
|
| But which one is easier to live with?
|
| (1) "this is in my control, but it is too hard, and I am too
| weak to do it", or (2) "this is NOT in my control, and I'm
| failing due to the circumstances, in spite of doing the most
| possible"
| astrobe_ wrote:
| > So clearly going back to this pattern won't necessarily make
| everyone sleep better. And so "modernity" is not the issue, and
| the problem does not have a simple solution.
|
| Yes, you can have a sleep pathology, and overweight can be the
| symptom of a pathology too - not to mention that you might have
| no weight problem at all, it might be that your genetic
| heritage makes you an outlier ; just as there are "naturally"
| skinny people or people that only need 5 hours of sleep.
|
| But the thing TFA questions is the exploitation of mere
| difficulties experienced by healthy people. Basically it says,
| _stop buying snake oil_.
|
| > Telling overweight people to eat less is like telling an
| alcoholic to drink less, or a depressed person to cheer up.
| It's pointless, silly, and naive and it won't work.
|
| Those are used as, indeed, simple examples - which include
| topics that are not related to health and well-being.
|
| The real message, though, is that you should analyze the
| problem you have before falling for snake oil. If you can't
| figure out by yourself what are the root causes of your
| problem, it resists _a priori_ reasoning and you are probably
| in the left part of the "law of decomplication" curve - a
| person with a specific problem (i.e. a pathology). In this
| case, sure, the right move is to go see a specialist.
| trabant00 wrote:
| You're confusing simple with easy. The article is talking about
| complexity.
|
| From first hand experience I can tell you weight loss is
| simple. It's just not easy. It's a process in which you learn
| how you can eat less and/or healthier in a manner that works
| for you starting from your access to food, habits, schedule,
| what food makes you feel good or not, etc. It's a lot of work,
| but the process is simple, you try things and see what works
| for you.
| Kinrany wrote:
| I've seen research that suggests that the simple solution to
| weight loss is "have a gene that prevents it or live in a
| low-pollution location for ten years".
| [deleted]
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(page generated 2021-10-06 23:02 UTC)