Intuition: “It seems like a good idea to keep one’s rules/policies simple.”
Me: “Ok, why? What are some prototypical examples where keeping one’s rules/policies simple would be useful?”
Intuition: “Well, consider legal codes—a complex criminal code turns into de-facto police discretion. A complex civil code turns into patent trolls and ambulance chasers, people who specialize in understanding the complexity and leveraging it against people who don’t. On personal level, in order for others to take your precommitments seriously, those precommitments need to be both easily communicated and clearly delineate lines which must not be crossed—otherwise people will plead ignorance or abuse grey areas, respectively. On an internal level, your rules necessarily adjust as the world throws new situations at you—new situations just aren’t covered by old rules, unless we keep those old rules very simple.”
Me: “Ok, trying to factor out the common denominator there… complexity implies grey areas. And when we try to make precommitments (i.e. follow general policies), grey areas can be abused by bad actors.”
Intuition: <mulls for a minute> “Yeah, that sounds about right. Complexity is bad because grey areas are bad, and complexity creates grey areas.”
Me: “The problem with grey areas is simple enough; Thomas Schelling already offers good models of that. But why does complexity necessarily imply grey areas in the policy? Is that an inherent feature of complexity in general, or is it specific to the kinds of complexity we’re imagining?”
Intuition: “A complex computer program might not have any grey areas, but as a policy that would have other problems...”
Me: “Like what?”
Intuition: “Well, my knee-jerk is to say it won’t actually be a policy we want, but when I actually picture it… it’s more like, the ontology won’t match the real world.”
Me: “And a simple policy would match real-world ontology better than a complex one? That not what I usually hear people say...”
Intuition: “Ok, imagine I draw a big circle on the ground, and say ‘stay out of this circle’. But some places there’s patches of grass or a puddle or whatever, so the boundary isn’t quite clear—grey areas. Now instead of a circle, I make it some complicated fractal shape. Then there will be more grey areas.”
Me: “Why would there be more—oh wait, I see. Surface area. More surface area means more grey areas. That makes sense.”
Intuition: “Right, exactly. Grey areas, in practice, occur in proportion to surface area. More complexity means more surface means more grey areas means more abuse of the rules.”
Intuition: “It seems like a good idea to keep one’s rules/policies simple.”
Me: “Ok, why? What are some prototypical examples where keeping one’s rules/policies simple would be useful?”
Intuition: “Well, consider legal codes—a complex criminal code turns into de-facto police discretion. A complex civil code turns into patent trolls and ambulance chasers, people who specialize in understanding the complexity and leveraging it against people who don’t. On personal level, in order for others to take your precommitments seriously, those precommitments need to be both easily communicated and clearly delineate lines which must not be crossed—otherwise people will plead ignorance or abuse grey areas, respectively. On an internal level, your rules necessarily adjust as the world throws new situations at you—new situations just aren’t covered by old rules, unless we keep those old rules very simple.”
Me: “Ok, trying to factor out the common denominator there… complexity implies grey areas. And when we try to make precommitments (i.e. follow general policies), grey areas can be abused by bad actors.”
Intuition: <mulls for a minute> “Yeah, that sounds about right. Complexity is bad because grey areas are bad, and complexity creates grey areas.”
Me: “The problem with grey areas is simple enough; Thomas Schelling already offers good models of that. But why does complexity necessarily imply grey areas in the policy? Is that an inherent feature of complexity in general, or is it specific to the kinds of complexity we’re imagining?”
Intuition: “A complex computer program might not have any grey areas, but as a policy that would have other problems...”
Me: “Like what?”
Intuition: “Well, my knee-jerk is to say it won’t actually be a policy we want, but when I actually picture it… it’s more like, the ontology won’t match the real world.”
Me: “And a simple policy would match real-world ontology better than a complex one? That not what I usually hear people say...”
Intuition: “Ok, imagine I draw a big circle on the ground, and say ‘stay out of this circle’. But some places there’s patches of grass or a puddle or whatever, so the boundary isn’t quite clear—grey areas. Now instead of a circle, I make it some complicated fractal shape. Then there will be more grey areas.”
Me: “Why would there be more—oh wait, I see. Surface area. More surface area means more grey areas. That makes sense.”
Intuition: “Right, exactly. Grey areas, in practice, occur in proportion to surface area. More complexity means more surface means more grey areas means more abuse of the rules.”