CDZ Why?

[320 Years of History]

Maybe you are referring to the penchant folks have for oversimplified answers, the misguided predilection some folks have for presuming that complex matters are indeed simple and thereby making themselves content with platitudinous and/or puerile responses to the questions they ask?

That is exactly what I am referring to. You may be quite correct that this is not new. So then the question I ask myself is "Why?" What about human natures makes this so prevalent. This is what I am referring to.

Well, you're asking yourself, so you'll surely want and have to do the detailed research to find out for yourself. I suggest you being your search by exploring the logical fallacy of causal reductionism, but it's your quest....

At the risk of falling victim to the very phenomenon about which you've asked, I posit philosophical ignorance be the reason, but I realize that chalking it up to that doesn't really address the deeper question of why folks allow themselves to be thus ignorant, less so why they are willing to exist in that state yet make decisions and air conclusions arrived at while in that state of being. My high level proposition also doesn't address whether that behavior varies with the context in which folks make their elections.

I'm aware of two writer's work that considers one aspect of your question in a political context. Some years back, Ilya Somin discussed the matter of political ignorance and democracy. I think you may find his essay worth reading, not only for his ideas, but also for those found in a paper he references in his essay. The paper, Democratic Reason: the Mechanisms of Collective Intelligence in Politics, argues "that democracy can be seen as a way to channel “democratic reason,” or the collective intelligence of the many. The paper hypothesizes that two main democratic mechanisms—the practice of inclusive deliberation (in its direct and indirect versions) and the institution of majority rule with universal suffrage— combine their epistemic properties to maximize the chances that the group pick the “better” political answer within a given a context and a set of values. The paper further argues that under the conditions of a liberal society, characterized among other things by sufficient cognitive diversity, these two mechanisms give the rule of the many an epistemic edge over versions of the rule of the few."

I also suggest you direct your research toward works on adolescent psychology. I suggest this because scholars view oversimplification as something mature and rational adults don't do, but that teens will do, in part because, quite simply, they haven't learned not to. Accordingly, AFAIK, it tends to be teens who are studied in order to gain an understanding of humans' cognitive efforts to cull detail to the point of errantly oversimplifying things. One paper that explores this idea is "The Relationship of Socio‐cognitive Oversimplification and the Social Behaviour of Adolescents." (You may have to obtain it via a library; I know of no free WWW source for it.)

When processing information about their world, people systematically reduce objective complexity. This is true not only of cognitive problem‐solving, but also other everyday situations, for example where decisions are required in situations relevant to morality. The developmental psychological perspective suggests that the adequate handling of situations like these requires, on the one hand, an age‐related, increasing differentiation in social cognition and, on the other hand, an ever more effective structuring and integration of information. However, the operation of the latter developmental process might carry the risk that complexity reduction (in the sense of oversimplification) substitutes for adequate psychosocial development. Undue emphasis on complexity reduction may suggest situation‐specific action alternatives, which though inappropriate, are ‘easier to handle’.

In an empirical study using 176 pupils from Polytechnic High Schools in (East) Berlin, we test the hypothesis that a tendency towards oversimplification in (fictitious) situations of moral relevance is systematically related to deviant behaviour at school. Results show that students exhibiting deviant behaviour do indeed have a stronger tendency to oversimplify social cognition. It can also be shown that the frequency of complex social cognitions generally increases with age. This trend, however, is found for non‐deviant students only. For deviant students a decrease in complex social cognitions with increasing age was found. Furthermore, it can be shown that these results are not confounded with the effects of gender or academic grade.​

If you get hold of the paper, you'll find a wealth of resources in its bibliography.

The preceding offers some ideas on obtaining a very complete, scholarly answer to the question you asked. Once you have gotten that level, I think you'll then be in a position to analyze the facts and data you've gathered to arrive at a higher level answer such as the following.

We live in a world of soundbites and dumbed-down media messages. Having so many people competing for our attention and trying to capture that attention in a short time is bound to lead to an oversimplification of complex issues much of the time. Add to this the fact that there are so many people trying to earn a living by coming up with simple solutions to complex problems and a strong picture of oversimplification starts to emerge.

Sometimes it is a straightforward matter of unscrupulous people trying to sell ‘snake oil’, magic potions to cure all our ills, ranging from wonder diets to get-rich-quick schemes. But much of the time there are people who are – up to a point – offering potentially helpful guidance and understanding, but doing so in a way that does not tell the whole story. For example, there is much that has been written from a psychological perspective which offers useful insights, but does not take account of the social context in which human psychology operates. By the same token, some people can offer important sociological insights, but without considering what these mean for people at a psychological level. If we want to have a sound understanding of people we need to have a more holistic perspective that incorporates both psychological and sociological aspects (hence the common use of the term ‘psychosocial’) rather than choosing between the two perspectives.

What can also lead to an oversimplification of complex issues is pressure of work. If you are under pressure to come up with a solution to someone’s problem (or your own), easy answers can have great appeal, even though easy answers are generally far removed from the best answers and are often dangerous. This can lead to digging ourselves into a deeper hole. That is, when one easy answer causes further problems, we may be tempted to look for another easy answer, rather than step back and draw on our professional knowledge, skills and values in a spirit of reflective practice.

I once heard someone say ‘The further away you are from something, the simpler it seems’. I think that is a very wise insight, as so often people don’t look closely enough at what they are dealing with, and the result can be a dangerously distorted picture – for example, when people don’t look closely enough at the risks involved in a situation and then go to one dangerous extreme (complacency) or the other (a risk-averse overreaction).

However, we also have to be aware of the dangers of the opposite of oversimplifying a complex situation, namely overcomplicating a simple matter. One example of this would be the tendency for many academic writers to present relatively straightforward concepts in very obscure, overly complex language. Sometimes concepts are very complex and very difficult to explain in simple terms, but that is not always the case.

In practice situations we can sometimes overcomplicate the simple because of anxiety. If we are dealing with a tense situation or one where emotions are running high, we may oversimplify, but the danger of going in the opposite direction can be present too. For example, I have come across many situations where someone is grieving and, for the moment, just needs reassurance and human warmth, but is actually being offered much more than that (reflecting the common false assumption that anyone who is grieving needs grief counselling).

So, how do we make sure we get the balance right by not oversimplifying the complex and not over complicating the simple? Well, if I were to give a simple formula, I would be falling into the very trap I am warning against. What it boils down to is thinking situations through before we respond to them, so that we have chance to consider what level of complexity we are dealing with.​

Those ideas come from Neil Thompson. Presumably he's done that detailed level research of which I wrote above, but unless one conducts one's own detailed research, there's no way to know. Notice that he doesn't provide any scholarly references for his ideas, so it's impossible to say whether he's merely speculating or whether his essay is an amalgamation of a wealth of rigorously developed research. All we can say is that his ideas are published on his own website.