[SEQ RERUN] Say Not “Complexity”

Today’s post, Say Not “Complexity” was originally published on 29 August 2007. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

The concept of complexity isn’t meaningless, but too often people assume that adding complexity to a system they don’t understand will improve it. If you don’t know how to solve a problem, adding complexity won’t help; better to say “I have no idea” than to say “complexity” and think you’ve reached an answer.


Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).

This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we’ll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky’s old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was Positive Bias: Look Into the Dark, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.

Sequence reruns are a community-driven effort. You can participate by re-reading the sequence post, discussing it here, posting the next day’s sequence reruns post, or summarizing forthcoming articles on the wiki. Go here for more details, or to have meta discussions about the Rerunning the Sequences series.

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