After a couple months more thought, I still feel as though there should be some more general sense in which simplicity is better. Maybe because it’s easier to find simple explanations that approximately match complex truths than to find complex explanations that approximately match simple truths, so even when you’re dealing with a domain filled with complex phenomena it’s better to use simplicity. On the other hand, perhaps the notion that approximations matter or can be meaningfully compared across domains of different complexity is begging the question somehow.
After a couple months more thought, I still feel as though there should be some more general sense in which simplicity is better. Maybe because it’s easier to find simple explanations that approximately match complex truths than to find complex explanations that approximately match simple truths, so even when you’re dealing with a domain filled with complex phenomena it’s better to use simplicity. On the other hand, perhaps the notion that approximations matter or can be meaningfully compared across domains of different complexity is begging the question somehow.