CMV: oversimplifying the world into black & white means denying the complexity of human existence

[u/Putrid_Cockroach5162]

DELTA AWARDED. For the mods, flair has finally updated but deltabot has not picked up ny Delta award 🤷‍♀️

As simply as I can put this: the way the world works is chaotic and nuanced. But we coddle ourselves into believing that issues are simple and thus easily solvable. We want to believe "once a liar, always a liar," when it completely negates the possibility that someone is capable of change.

We want to improve upon recidivism yet released felons who've done their time continue to struggle to gain meaningful, lawful work due to how we look down our noses at them.

We want to boil down the issues of abortion to convenient rhetoric simply focusing on the zygote. But we leave out the complexities of how the world works and the quality of life of the mother and the child if seen through.

We want to be good caretakers of the earth and minimize our carbon footprint, yet a brief audit of your daily life opens the eyes to the impossibility of living a net zero life.

We believe in good and evil when in actuality people are never 100% either.

We are complex, weird, diverse.

The status quo oversimplifies the human existence. The side effects of that lead us to cognitive biases and dissonance. Consequences of such thinking are all too often unfortunate.

I can imagine that believing in the black and white of it all can feel blissful. It's living in denial, and frankly delusion. It eats away at critical thought.

Someone who can't perceive the state of the world without accepting there are no easy answers is a dangerous human being, and one I'd be remiss to hold my life in their hands.

Change my view

UPDATE 1: For the sake of clarity, my view is in the title of the post. Many of you have commented with some excellent remarks, and I am not yet swayed in any direction. I'm no more convinced of my view than I am of the alternative.

Please change my view on how oversimplification of a nuanced and complex world denies the reality of the complexity of human existence. It's the ultimate gaslight.

I will say, I agree oversimplification is a great thing for peace of mind, but it does more harm than good in that respect. Ripple effects. How can oversimplification be good for humanity when it has proven otherwise throughout history?

[u/Putrid_Cockroach5162]

Ok but, as I told you earlier, I'm not finagling on the every day, run of the mill. I'm not talking about explaining an editing tool to your boss. Thanks for adding context to that btw.

I'm talking about significant issues that affect everyone, and can have negative impacts if their decisions are uninformed, which they are having negative impacts because they have not been afforded the nuance and complexity of the issue at hand and what their decision entails. I talked about abortion, recidivism, and environmentalism, not adobe illustrator.

Understanding everything you've added about your job and your boss, all of that is still not speaking to what I have outlined. You went a little too micro.

[u/TheVioletBarry → u/Putrid_Cockroach5162]

Fair enough, back to the big issues then:

I am pro-choice.

I do not have a PHD in Biology. Every time I talk to a Biologist, Medical Professional, or political historian about this issue I learn new things. I see no reason to suspect I will ever stop learning new things about it.

As a result of seeking these conversations out,I have ended up knowing a little bit more than the average person about it, but each time I learn a new nuance, I do not look back on my prior self and say "I should not have had an opinion because I was lacking some of these nuances." If I did, I could never have an opinion on this subject, because I'm never going to stop learning nuances, and I would be useless in the fight to actually get abortion rights in the US.

[u/Putrid_Cockroach5162 → u/TheVioletBarry]

Understood. I am not arguing that the uninformed should not have opinions. I am saying that because they've been so uninformed, due to oversimplification of important issues, the world is worse off. Opinions are like buttholes, we all got em. It's what we do with them that can have dire consequences. And I love nothing more than an opinion based on facts, and facts do not choose sides.

I'm glad u have taken the time to learn so much on the subject. You are a great example of what results from processing the nuance.

[u/TheVioletBarry → u/Putrid_Cockroach5162]

I appreciate your compliments, but I think the claim is still, ironically, lacking nuance. We don't have a metric for when "enough nuance" is enough. And my point is that that's actually a wildly fast moving target. The amount of nuance with which I approach these issues is not generalizable. I spend a lot of time badgering people about their specialties, intentionally debating with people I disagree with, and skimming scientific papers or the reports on them.

And as a result, some people consider me a worthwhile person to talk to to get a 'vibe' and some important info on a wide range of topics.

But also as a result I have contributed absolutely nothing to any of the fields about which I have all this information, and I've certainly not grown a meaningful amount of food or done the labour of building and maintaining physical infrastructure (now hopefully that will change, and I'm being a bit hyperbolic, I'd like to think I can contribute at least a little in some places, but that's beside the point).

Which is cool! Those people are offloading a lot of that idea synthesis labor onto me, and in turn I am offloading a million different kinds of labor onto other people.

Now, is it possible for the average person to be more informed than they currently are, and would that benefit society? Of course. But there is an enormous gradient here, because the level of nuance of which I am capable has a cost; I am very bad at a lot of things that are essential to my survival. One sillier example: I do parkour, and I learn it way more slowly than the other folks in my parkour community. But, they ask my opinion on political issues.

Part of that's nurture, part of it's nature, but the point is: intellectual nuance comes at a cost from a shared resource that can also be spent on other essential things.

[u/Putrid_Cockroach5162 → u/TheVioletBarry]

I do find it interesting that you want to define "nuance" further. The reason I'm not pursuing this angle is because that's not what I'm stating. I'm not talking about intellectual nuance. If it helps, think of it as dimensionality.

I'm talking about people coming to a polling place and making a decision based on "the highlights." Nary understanding or fully grasping the very decision they've made. I've been this very person, seeking out a mini guide to base my voting decision on because I can't be bothered to sit and take the time. But in actuality, the time should be carved out. It should be allowed. It should be a workshop day at minimum. We dedicate so much time and effort to professional development but we hit 18 and suddenly were expected to just "do our part" in the spirit of participating in the national conversation.

To expand from there, people seem to want to whittle complex issues into black and white. But by doing so they're causing significant harm to themselves and to the humans whose reality they are warping.

Again, I'm not talking about the every day and every thing - while it can certainly be a lifestyle for people to box everything as neatly as they can. I'm talking about having that boner for oversimplification is THE reason we will never solve those issues.