Intellectuals explain things. Simplifiers make things seem simple. Complexifiers make things seem complex.
Take the minimum wage, for example:
Simplifier: People are for or against increasing the minimum wage for many reasons, but there’s basically one major tradeoff: more jobs vs. more money per worker. The more you raise the minimum wage, the more money for each worker. But, as a result, employers will seek to hire fewer workers because workers are now more expensive.
Complexifier: The minimum wage stands as a sentinel of societal conscience, a measure not merely of economic policy but of our collective commitment to equity and justice. Its roots delve deep into the annals of history, entwined with the sweat and toil of generations past. To contemplate altering its course without heed to this historical tapestry is to disregard the echoes of labor strife that reverberate through time.1
Complexifiers have their place: their apparent profundity can motivate action and their insistence on complexity can provide needed caution.
But they don’t, strictly speaking, explain things. Their “explanations” don’t help you understand a problem better — just make you think you understand it worse. Someone insisting a problem is far more complex than you imagine isn’t making anything clearer. They’re muddying the waters.
Simplifiers, on the other hand, offer genuine explanations that clarify a problem by distilling it into a few key factors. As a result, their explanations, unlike those of complexifiers, tend to be useful for solving problems.
Of course, there is the risk of "oversimplifying” — i.e., leaving one’s audience with the impression that problems are simpler than they are. But given the alternative, it is usually better to be a simplifier — albeit while acknowledging that the world isn’t as simple as one might hope.
P.S. Admittedly, being a simplifier is harder. To explain simply requires a strong understanding and a willingness to be thought simple-minded, while insisting on complications requires hardly any knowledge and little reputational risk.
In a quote: “Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex … It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.” —E.F. Schumacher
ChatGPT wrote this.