“Having few parts” is what Occam’s razor seems to be going for. We can speak specifically of “burdensome details,” but I can’t think of a one-word replacement for “simple” used in this sense.
It is a problem that people tend to use “simple” to mean “intuitive” or “easy to understand,” and “complicated” to mean “counterintuitive.” Based on the “official” definitions, quantum mechanics and mathematics are extremely simple while human emotions are exceedingly complex.
I think human beings have internalized a crude version of Occam’s Razor that works for most normal social situations—the absurdity heuristic. We use it to see through elaborate, highly improbable excuses, for example. It just misfires when dealing with deeper physical reality because its focus is on minds and emotions. Hence, two different, nearly opposite meanings of the word “simple.”
“Having few parts” is what Occam’s razor seems to be going for. We can speak specifically of “burdensome details,” but I can’t think of a one-word replacement for “simple” used in this sense.
It is a problem that people tend to use “simple” to mean “intuitive” or “easy to understand,” and “complicated” to mean “counterintuitive.” Based on the “official” definitions, quantum mechanics and mathematics are extremely simple while human emotions are exceedingly complex.
I think human beings have internalized a crude version of Occam’s Razor that works for most normal social situations—the absurdity heuristic. We use it to see through elaborate, highly improbable excuses, for example. It just misfires when dealing with deeper physical reality because its focus is on minds and emotions. Hence, two different, nearly opposite meanings of the word “simple.”