Oversimplification

Dan Burkett

Lazy hands make for poverty, but diligent hands bring wealth.

Proverbs 10:4

The fallacy of oversimplification occurs when we attempt to make some­thing appear simpler by ignoring certain relevant complexities.

This is an oversimplification of human motivations, but we can also over­simplify the way in which certain systems function. In 2014, Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe carried a snowball onto the Senate floor, effectively arguing that since it was snowing in Washington, climate change must be a myth. In doing so, he ignored a number of relevant complexities - including

the important difference between local “weather” and global “climate.” We can make oversimplifications about human-made systems too. The philoso­pher John Stuart Mill (1843) notes that there are many doctrines that “ascribe absolute goodness to particular forms of government, particular social arrangements, and even to particular modes of education, without reference to the state of civilization and the various distinguishing charac­ters of the society for which they are intended” (553).

Sometimes oversimplification makes sense. The world can be a convo­luted place, and we may need to ignore certain factors in order to get our heads around certain thorny ideas. But in other cases, oversimplification can be used deliberately to deceive or divide people. Politicians are particularly good at this, such as when - only nine days after the September 11 attacks - President George W. Bush claimed that “either you are with us, or you’re with the terrorists.” This oversimplification (which is also an example of a false dilemma; see Chapter 81) deliberately ignored a number of nuanced positions that individuals might hold toward the “War on Terror.” Clearly, it was possible to object to some elements of the United States’ for­eign policy without necessarily being “with the terrorists.”

Mill (1843) notes that a specific kind of oversimplification - “the fallacy of the single cause” - occurs when we attempt to “explain complicated phe­nomena by a simpler theory than their nature admits of” (552). Put another way, this version of the oversimplification fallacy involves assuming that a particular outcome has only one simple cause when in reality a number of complex causes may have been involved. These are sometimes referred to as “jointly sufficient causes.”

Suppose, for example, that a severe thunderstorm washes away my cliff­side home and leaves me destitute. I might find myself saying something like the following to my friends: “I’m homeless and broke because of that storm.” But while the storm was a necessary factor in the destruction of my home, it wasn’t sufficient. There were several other causal factors that led to my cur­rent situation including (1) choosing to build my home in such a precarious location in the first place, (2) ignoring the advice of engineers and local officials, and (3) opting to forego comprehensive home insurance in favor of spending this money on more frivolous purchases.

Why does this matter? Well, suppose I wanted to prevent the same thing happening again. If I identify the storm as the single cause of my destitution, then it seems there’s not a lot I can do. “Storms are acts of God,” I might say, “and there’s nothing I can do to stop those.” But if I recognize the wider set of sufficient causes, it becomes apparent that there are many ways in which I could avoid the same tragedy occurring a second time: I could insure my home, seek expert advice on its construction, or just build it somewhere safer.

This is where the real risk of oversimplification lies. Our understanding of relationships of cause and effect allows us to reason about - and interact with - the world around us. In fact, it’s vital to our survival. I know that eating causes me not to starve, and that exposure to extreme heat or cold causes me to suffer harm. Understanding causal relationships is just as important on a more global scale. We cannot prevent another world war or avert the next Cuban Missile Crisis unless we fully understand the complex web of causal factors that brought about such events. If we oversimplify these causes, we may get things horribly wrong. Similar problems occur when we ignore the intricacies of natural systems or of human motivations. We cannot adequately address climate change until we recognize the many moving parts that make up the global environment, nor can we solve a refu­gee crisis unless we fully understand the myriad reasons why people decide to migrate.

In order to avoid the fallacy, we need to become comfortable with accept­ing complicated answers to certain questions. In cases of cause-and-effect, this means ignoring simplistic single-cause answers in favor of explanations that involve sets of jointly sufficient causes.

When we obscure, ignore, or simply fail to identify certain factors, we run a high risk of misunderstanding reality. If we try to address an issue on the basis of this mistaken understanding, there’s a good chance our actions will - at best - be ineffective, or - at worst - exacerbate the very problem we are trying to solve.

Reference

Mill, John Stuart. 1843. A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.