, Columnist
Science Shows Why Simplifying Is Hard and Complicating Is Easy
Our brains appear hardwired to add stuff rather than take things away. That explains a lot about the messes we keep making.
Yearning for simplicity.
Photographer: Rafa Rivas/AFP via Getty Images
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Why is everything so darned complicated? And I really mean everything: our taxes, schedules, bureaucracies, machines, algorithms, org charts, our school and welfare and healthcare systems, you name it.
Even — and I say this as an oft culpable columnist — our diction. “If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out,” George Orwell stipulated in one of his rules of writing. I’m tempted to edit him thus: If it is possible to cut a word [], [] cut it [].