- You have seen the Simplificators. These guys say that Excel is just a GUI wrapper with some cool formulas over SQL. Or SQL is just a CLI wrapper with some constraints over text files. Well, I know nobody says that but you get the idea. You’ll quickly identify these guys when you see them.
- Their basic premise is to frame an idea sans the complexity it took to create and the complexity it possesses in an ignorant way. Or worse, to put the idea down, deliberately. Basically make the idea seem banal.
- Devil lies in the detail. The nuances of an idea make it what it is. And when you bring down complexity and oversimplify, you’re losing substance.
- It’s like saying humans are moving water. It’s technically true but we don’t think moving water when we think humans.
- The value of an entity lies in the experience of it & not the description of it. You can’t give a person a complete accurate picture of an entity using comprehension. Descriptions are the map, experience is the terrain. When you walk the terrain, you feel the minute details of it. And you can’t capture all of it in the map itself. Your description is bound to fall short of the experience.
- I don’t want to get into what their act of simplification stems from but this is an argument against the act. It’s deeply insulting to compress a thing of breadth with a few sentences. It doesn’t do justice to the entity & is ignorant to say the least.
- Serious thinkers know when to stop simplifying. They know when a sentence must become a paragraph, when a paragraph must become practice, and when the only honest answer is “you have to experience it.”
Personal Segue
- In cybersecurity, simplification is a crime. You must do the deep dive into the details. There’s only 1% possibility that you require that level of depth at a particular point in time. But when you do, you can’t be saying, “I don’t know what’s happening”. You’re the guy everyone reaches to when hell breaks loose. Why? Cuz they think you must know what’s going on. You’re the last hope. And the last hope can’t afford to be dumbfounded because they chose to simplify.