Things Unlearned
2nd October 2021
It’s so easy to think that simple solutions exist. But if you look at the history of ideas that actually worked, they tend to only be simple from a distance. The closer you get, the more you notice that the working idea is surrounding by a huge number of almost identical ideas that don’t work.
Take bicycles, for example. They seem simple and obvious, but it took two centuries to figure out all the details and most people today can’t actually locate the working idea amongst its neighbours.
…
It’s ok to think that things have flaws or could be improved. But it’s a trap to believe that it’s ever the case that a simple solution exists and everyone else is just too enfeebled of character to push the miracle button. All the miracle buttons that we know about have already been pressed.