Artificial Complexity in < 500 Words

This is a Writing Lab experiment to compress the core ideas of a 4,000+ word article on Decomplication to 500 words or fewer.

Many of us struggle with common problems like losing weight, managing our money, or being productive. And because these problems are so common, there’s a massive amount of money to be made in solving them.

Since there is so much demand for these solutions, there’s a huge supply of information on them. A boon of the Internet is that promoting your own solution to a common problem, effective or not, is quick and easy. You can spin up a website on it in an afternoon and start accepting credit cards that evening.

But common problems typically do not have complex solutions, and don’t require many different solutions or viewpoints. To lose weight, eat less. To be productive, do deep work. A plethora of recipes is good, a plethora of diets not so much.

The only way to compete on solving these common problems is by introducing “artificial complexity” to convince the consumer that it is not a simple problem, and that they need your solution. It’s not their fault they failed, it’s that they didn’t have your answer.

People who fail to solve these problems on their own develop cognitive dissonance toward them: “Losing weight must be hard and complicated, because I haven’t been able to do it.” If it were simple and easy, they’d feel bad, so they reframe it as complex and hard.

This cognitive dissonance makes them seek out alternative explanations for their failures because it’s difficult to accept that the solution is obvious and simple and they failed to execute on it.

That desire for alternative solutions and the forces of supply and demand create a cycle of artificial complexity where the near-infinite demand for “solutions” to common problems creates a near infinite supply of “new” solutions, muddying the market with infomania, fear, and hype. Worse, since most of the invented solutions are ineffective, the continuing failure of the consumer exacerbates the cycle again and again.

To escape artificial complexity on an individual level, you must recognize when a problem is truly simple, and then seek out the simple solutions. To lose weight, “eat whole foods, mostly plants, not too much” in the words of Michael Pollan. To network with interesting people, do interesting things.

When you recognize that the popularity of a problem creates more artificial complexity around its solutions, you’ll be better equipped to effectively solve problems as they arise, and lose less time to the unproductive noise.