Simplifications

"To simplify something accurately, you've got to understand it deeply."
--Thomas Friedman, qtd. in The New Yorker

I love that quote, but the problem I run into almost daily is, how do you know when someone's simple explanation reflects deep understanding, and when it reflects simple-mindedness? I like it when people use simple analogies and plain language to explain complex systems. For people who have spent a lot of time studying complex systems, like the financial markets or the human genome, it is a real gift to be able to explain them simply to people who aren't as familiar with those systems. But simplicity is also a useful tool for people who want to pretend they know more about a subject than they do, for people who think they understand the subject better than they actually do, or for people who want to influence public opinion on the subject.

My general solution is to trust simple explanations from people with good credentials on the subject, and to be skeptical of simple explanations from people who probably don't understand the subject in a very nuanced way. But even that is occasionally problematic, since some of my acquaintances have an uncanny ability to understand complex systems just by keeping up with the news and talking to people, and other acquaintances have a tendency to think they know a lot about a system when they really only know a little about it.