The Midwit Trap

- complicated ideas take more energy to transmit than simple ones

- for every complex idea there are a large number of stupid copies

- people can often understand things without being able to articulate them, so when a person is helped by a complex meme, they will often reproduce and transmit a simpler variant of the original complex meme

- for some p... See more

Are you familiar with the midwit meme? So, it’s this bell curve with a guy who doesn’t think very much, then someone who has average intelligence but thinks it’s superior, and then the guy who’s kind of transcended everything and is very intelligent and actually thinks in the same way as the guy who doesn’t think very much. So for me, I think I st

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The Single Perspective Instinct We find simple ideas very attractive. We enjoy that moment of insight, we enjoy feeling we really understand or know something. And it is easy to take off down a slippery slope, from one attention-grabbing simple idea to a feeling that this idea beautifully explains, or is the beautiful solution for, lots of other th... See more

We all tend to oversimplify complex things into two competing ideologies: generalist or specialist, objective or subjective, individual or team. This can be useful, but it can also make us think we should pick a side. It also becomes an issue when we try and solve them—calling these things ‘problems’ implies there is a correct answer somewhere. But... See more

A complex problem cannot be simplified. If you can simplify it, then it isn’t a complex problem. You may choose to focus energy on a key leverage point, or establish one or more enabling constraints. To make progress, you may choose to selectively ignore things, blur your vision, or think in broad strokes. These approaches will reduce cognitive loa... See more

Often, we avoid complexity and instead collapse all of our uncertainty into a neat ideology that claims to explain everything. But if we resist that urge and instead lean into it, it can bring us into a state of epistemic humility. We realise just how much we don’t know, and how hard these problems are to solve. And in that acceptance, we often fin... See more