Simple solutions to complex problems?

Hello G?tz Müller - thank you for your article this morning on ????????????????????!

I read it and it inspired me to several thoughts - thus this post.

You cite "?????? ?????????? ?????????????? ?????????????? ?????????? ???? ?? ???????????? ????????????????, ?????? ???? ???? ??????????" (by Umberto Eco from his novel "????????????????'?? ????????????????")

... and I thought: "is this really by Eco?" I looked it up and found the original to be by H. L. Mencken. And here it gets interesting (at least to me):

• The Mencken quote often gets cited as ?For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.“ or "There is always an easy solution to every problem - neat, plausible, and wrong." - that was what I knew, too ... but that's not the original wording. So ... it's wrong!
• the real original quote is

"there is always a well-known solution to every human problem — neat, plausible, and wrong"

(H.L. Mencken: "Prejudices: Second Series", 1921? (Link))

and yes, Umberto Eco cites this in his book. In complete form, Eco writes: "For every complex problem there is a simple solution, and it is wrong. And who said that again? I don't know who said that." - So Eco, too, mentions that this quote is not invented by himself (without mentioning Mencken).

Who was H. L. Mencken to make such a statement?

?? H. L. Mencken - Wikipedia

Was Mencken a scientist? No. Henry Louis Mencken was an American journalist, essayist, satirist, cultural critic and language scholar. Satirist and critic seem to stand out here.

So there is no scientific approach or background to his statement.

What else I find interesting is the following:

• his original saying does not mention complexity! It says: human problems! ... Only if you refer that all human problems were complex (which they might be) you could substitute human problems by complex problems ... as is often done in versions of the quote being used. But it's not in the original! And: it's not valid the other way around: not all complex problems (by far) are human problems!
• I also thought of Goldratt's following fundamental statement

"Every situation, no matter how complex it initially looks, is exceedingly simple."

• - This is Goldratt's "law" of inherent simplicity (following Isaac Newton's foundation of all modern science: "Natura valde simplex est et sibi consona" - Nature, Reality, is exceedingly simple and harmonious with itself.) This is one of the major fundamentals in this book "The Choice". There is no "real" conflict in nature - forces don't stand in contradiction with each other - it just may seem so, because we don't understand enough about them and their characteristics (yet). Our knowledge and assumptions are lacking in these cases. Systems converge onto very few common causes at the base, that govern the whole system. Even People, Goldratt says, are often predictable - "not totally predictable, but neither are electrons (Heisenberg's uncertainty principle) or the weather. If people were totally unpredictable, there would not be a basis for society."
• In The Choice, Goldratt writes on complexity: "If you are a scientist or manager, you are interested in the difficulty of controlling and predicting a system's behavior, especially when changes are introduced. You want to know how many points you have to touch to impact, control and predict effect on the whole system. ... So the level of complexity of a system is described by the degrees of freedom the system has. A system with 4 degrees of freedom is orders of magnitude more complex and harder to control and predict than a system that has only 1 degree of freedom.
• From TOC we know that any halfway stable system can be steered by finding and subordinating everything to the One Constraint of the system. ... This may appear contrary to the Mencken statement - so which view and reality is correct?
• As we can see: there is no real contradiction, since Mencken's original statement does not mention complexity, but human problems. But Goldratt's reason includes human problems - all problems and situations! Goldratt also says in The Choice: "The first and most profound obstacle is that people believe that reality is complex, and therefore they are looking for sophisticated explanations for complicated solutions. Do you understand how devastating this is?" ... he continues, "When I left physics and started to deal with organizations, I was astonished to see that the attitude of most people is that the more sophisticated something is, the more respectable it is." ... "You see, since complicated solutions never work, people tell themselves that they don't know enough, that a lot of detailed knowledge is needed before one can even attempt to understand an environment." ... "The admiration of sophistication is totally wrong," he firmly continues. "The key for thinking like a true scientist is the acceptance that any real-life situation, no matter how complex it initially looks, once understood, is actually embarrassingly simple. Moreover, if the situation is based on human interactions, you probably already have enough knowledge to begin with."
• Well ... Goldratt was a physicist and one of the most profound and stringent thinkers with his thinking tools and very successful practical application throughout different kinds of industry verticals and the whole value chain from logistics over production to project management, marketing/sales and retail ... so I tend to take his findings on a very strong basis.
• ... whereas very many, also extremely intelligent, people get gaslighted by the perceived "complexity" of situations to lose the overview and think that only very sophisticated and complicated solutions may work. Usually they don't. Goldratt gives several concrete real-life company examples (and from other parts of life) in the book The Choice and other books of his. May be worth reading them ;-)

G?tz Müller - G?tz, maybe I didn't catch your intent on the following part of your article: I do think that it is important to distinguish between complicated and complex, where complexity is a situation where you truly can't predict the future development of a system precisely - and the longer the time-horizon, the less probable the prediction. And this applies to various physical systems, too - like the weather, or double pendulums, or many others.

Where you can precisely say how a mechanical process will work for a long time - like a clock, for example (unless something breaks, wears down etc. - that's the limit of "complicated" here), you can't with complex systems. What do/did you think and mean?

Best regards

Thorsten Speil

I also wrote an article ???????????????? ???? ???????????????????? recently that got some dispute by Dave Snowden, Niels Pflaeging, Al Shalloway and others ... some good comments there - https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/thoughts-complexity-might-get-complicated-thorsten-speil-jzxue?trackingId=Gx94dRtvQ5yHfQi5LnwYMg%3D%3D&lipi=urn%3Ali%3Apage%3Ad_flagship3_detail_base%3BlGL%2FHxOuQASCrKdc5Z%2B02Q%3D%3D

Articles on the quote by H. L. Mencken (also cited by Umberto Eco):

• ZITATFORSCHUNG: "Für jedes komplexe Problem gibt es eine einfache L?sung, und die ist falsch." Umberto Eco (angeblich) (falschzitate.blogspot.com)
• richtiges_zitieren_10._4._2018.pdf (weebly.com)

The article by G?tz Müller :

https://www.dhirubhai.net/posts/goetzmueller_warum-dinge-nicht-komplex-sind-activity-7221768696933863424-0ueG?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop