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Oversimplification Quotes

Browse 36 quotes about Oversimplification.

Oversimplification Quotes

“Reasoning with senselessness will never build faith. Faith is strengthened when you stop collecting fragmented signs and questionable hunches, in order to build an acceptable reason for your wrong decisions and less than desirable circumstances.”

AcceptanceCircumstancesEvidenceDenialDishonestyDemeaningBlaming OthersAvoiding PainOversimplificationHiding The TruthConvincing YourselfBuilding FaithComplicatingHurting OtherAvoiding Through Misdirection
Author:Shannon L. Alder
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“Most of us do not like not being able to see what others see or make sense of something new. We do not like it when things do not come together and fit nicely for us. That is why most popular movies have Hollywood endings. The public prefers a tidy finale. And we especially do not like it when things are contradictory, because then it is much harder to reconcile them (this is particularly true for Westerners). This sense of confusion triggers in a us a feeling of noxious anxiety. It generates tension. So we feel compelled to reduce it, solve it, complete it, reconcile it, make it make sense. And when we do solve these puzzles, there's relief. It feels good. We REALLY like it when things come together. What I am describing is a very basic human psychological process, captured by the second Gestalt principle. It is what we call the 'press for coherence.' It has been called many different things in psychology: consonance, need for closure, congruity, harmony, need for meaning, the consistency principle. At its core it is the drive to reduce the tension, disorientation, and dissonance that come from complexity, incoherence, and contradiction. In the 1930s, Bluma Zeigarnik, a student of Lewin's in Berlin, designed a famous study to test the impact of this idea of tension and coherence. Lewin had noticed that waiters in his local cafe seemed to have better recollections of unpaid orders than of those already settled. A lab study was run to examine this phenomenon, and it showed that people tend to remember uncompleted tasks, like half-finished math or word problems, better than completed tasks. This is because the unfinished task triggers a feeling of tension, which gets associated with the task and keeps it lingering in our minds. The completed problems are, well, complete, so we forget them and move on. They later called this the 'Zeigarnik effect,' and it has influenced the study of many things, from advertising campaigns to coping with the suicide of loved ones to dysphoric rumination of past conflicts.”

CoherenceUnfinished BusinessCognitive DissonanceRuminationOversimplificationZeigarnikIntractable ConflictWhy Writers Write
Book:The Five Percent: Finding Solutions to Seemingly Impossible Conflicts
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“It is critical to recognize that we live in an increasingly complex world - biologically, socially, politically, technologically, you name it - that holds many inherent contradictions. In the middle of this complex world are we humans, who have a natural tendency to seek coherence in what we see, feel, think, and do. When we experience conflict, this tendency intensifies. Conflict is essentially a contradiction, an incompatibility, oppositely directed forces, and a difference that triggers tension. When we encounter conflict, within the field of forces that constitute it, the natural human tendency is to reduce that tension by seeking coherence through simplification. Research shows that this tendency toward simplification becomes even more intensified when we are under stress, threat, time constraints, fatigue, and various other conditions all absolutely typical of conflict. So what is the big idea? It is NOT that coherence is bad and complexity is good. Coherence seeking is simply a necessary and functional process that helps us interpret and respond to our world efficiently and (hopefully) effectively. And complexity in extremes is a nightmare - think of Mogadishu, Somalia, in the 1990s or the financial crisis of 2009 or Times Square during rush hour on a Friday afternoon. On the other hand, too much coherence can be just as pathological: for example, the collapse of the nuances and contradictions inherent in any conflict situation into simple 'us versus them' terms, or a deep commitment to a rigid understanding of conflicts based on past sentiments and obsolete information. Either extreme - overwhelming complexity or oversimplified coherence - is problematic. But in difficult, long-term conflicts, the tide pulls fiercely toward simplification of complex realities. This is what we must content with.”

ComplexityCoherenceCognitive DissonanceOversimplificationUs Vs ThemIntractable ConflictSocial Conflicts
Book:The Five Percent: Finding Solutions to Seemingly Impossible Conflicts
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“Human beings are driven toward consistency and coherence in their perception, thinking, feeling, behavior, and social relationships. This is natural and functional. Conflict intensifies this drive, which can become dysfunctional during prolonged conflicts. However, developing more complex patterns of thinking, feeling, acting, and social organizing can mitigate this, resulting in more constructive responses to conflict.”

ConflictComplexityTribalismCoherenceOversimplificationUs Vs ThemIntractable ConflictSocial Conflicts
Book:The Five Percent: Finding Solutions to Seemingly Impossible Conflicts
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“We don't always think about how oversimplification leads to greater conflict, but it does... keeping it simple also leads to ignoring what doesn't fit the picture until it becomes a throbbing wound. Keeping it simple leads to things being missed and so not getting things completely right, which, in the world of over-simplification, means getting them wrong.”

ConflictWoundsComplexityOversimplificationConflictedReality Is ComplexRight Versus Wrong
Author:Shellen Lubin
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“...[T]here is no art in being intelligible if one renounces all thoroughness of insight; but also it produces a disgusting medley of compiled observations and half-reasoned principles. Shallow pates enjoy this because it can be used for everyday chat, but the sagacious find in it only confusion, and being unsatisfied and unable to help themselves, they turn away their eyes, while philosophers, who see quite well through this delusion, are little listened to when they call men off for a time from this pretended popularity in order that they might be rightfully popular after they have attained a definite insight.”

Scientific MethodAbsolute TruthOversimplification
Book:Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals
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“Of course, our natural impulse in these [intractable conflict] situations is to fight or flee. To lash out, blame, attack, or challenge someone, or otherwise try to get out and avoid the situation altogether. These responses make perfect sense in the short term, but likely will have little effect on the 5 percent [of conflicts that are intractable]. In fact, they may make matters worse in the long term. So if escaping or resolving this conflict is your goal (and we do not assume this is always the case), we suggest a different approach. And it begins with complicating your life.”

ComplexityEngagementAvoidanceConflict ResolutionPolarizationConflict ManagementOversimplificationUs Vs ThemIntractable ConflictSocial Conflicts
Book:The Five Percent: Finding Solutions to Seemingly Impossible Conflicts
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“Recall that the collapse of complexity that accompanies 5 percent [i.e. intractable] conflicts happens along many dimensions: - A very complication situation becomes very simple. - A focus on concrete details in the conflict shifts to matters of general abstract principle. - Concerns over obtaining accurate information regarding substantive issues transform into concerns over defending one's identity, ideology, and values. - The out-group, which was seen as made up of many different types of individuals, now are all alike. - The in-group, which was seen as made up of many different types of individuals, now are all similar. - Whereas I once held many contradictions within myself in terms of what I valued, thought, and did; now I am always consistent in this conflict. - Whereas I used to feel different things about this conflict - good, bad, and ambivalent; now I feel only an overwhelming sense of enmity and hate. - I've shifted from long-term thinking and planning toward short-term reactions and concerns. - Where I once had many action options available to me, I now have one: attack. This is the bad news about the 5 percent, but it's also the good news. The collapse of complexity occurs on so many levels, all leading to a similar state of 'us versus them' thinking, that reintroducing a sense of complexity and agency can also be achieved in a wide variety of ways. There are therefore many places to find points of leverage to rupture the certainty and oversimplification that rules in these situations. The question is how to find them.”

PerspectiveConflictComplexityTribalismFramingOversimplificationUs Vs ThemIntractable ConflictConfliction Resolution
Book:The Five Percent: Finding Solutions to Seemingly Impossible Conflicts
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“[Isaiah] Berlin was aware that when people feel lost in the complicated labyrinth of life, with its unsolvable tensions and paradoxes, they attempt to save themselves by trying to simplify and reduce reality to a few manageable patterns and clear ideas. Yet, they can never change the fact that life is a mixture of complexity and perplexity, and the more possibilities we are confronted with, the more perplexed and challenged we are likely to be.”

SimplicityComplexityParadoxPerplexityOversimplification
Book:Faces of Moderation: The Art of Balance in an Age of Extremes
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“See the system. When you find yourself stuck in an oversimplified polarized conflict, a useful first step is to try to become more aware of the system as a whole: to provide more context to your understanding of the terrain in which the stakeholders are embedded, whether they are disputants, mediators, negotiators, lawyers, or other third parties. This can help you to see the forest and the trees; it is a critical step toward regaining some sense of accuracy, agency, possibility, and control in the situation.”

PeacePerspectiveComplexityConflict ResolutionConflictsFramingPolarizationOversimplificationUs Vs ThemIntractable Conflict
Book:The Five Percent: Finding Solutions to Seemingly Impossible Conflicts
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“Complex organisms cannot be construed as the sum of their genes, nor do genes alone build particular items of anatomy or behavior by themselves. Most genes influence several aspects of anatomy and behavior as they operate through complex interactions with other genes and their products, and with environmental factors both within and outside the developing organism. We fall into a deep error, not just a harmful oversimplification, when we speak of genes "for" particular items of anatomy or behavior.”

FallSpeakInfluenceParticularProductsBehaviorAspectErrorsComplexesEnvironmentalFactorsDevelopingGenesInteractionOrganismsItemsAnatomyOversimplificationInteraction With OthersEnvironmental Factors
Author:Stephen Jay Gould
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“All political movements are like this - we are in the right, everyone else is in the wrong. The people on our own side who disagree with us are heretics, and they start becoming enemies. With it comes an absolute conviction of your own moral superiority. There's oversimplification in everything, and a terror of flexibility.”

PeopleRealityPoliticalPoliticsSidesCommunityPartyMoralEnemyGenerationsHuman NatureMovementBecomingEthicsAbsolutesStrategyUnityTerrorConvictionIdeologyTeaVotingDisagreeFree SpeechSuperiorityPolitical PartiesFlexibilityCivilityDisobedienceTea PartyCivil DisobedienceHereticPartisanshipThird PartiesPolitical MovementsOversimplificationMoral Superiority
Author:Doris Lessing
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“I think during the Cold War in America at least, there was a division; there was the Soviet government and there were the oppressed people, who were not represented by this government. That was a massive oversimplification of what the true situation was there. There were certainly many people who were completely and fully alienated from the government.”

PeopleThinkingWarGovernmentAmericaSituationColdMassiveDivisionSovietOppressedCold WarOversimplification
Author:Joe Weisberg
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“The theoretical fruits of deliberate oversimplification through idealization are not to be denied... Reality in all its messy particularity is too complicated to theorize about, taken straight. The issue is, rather (since every idealization is a strategic choice), which idealizations might really shed some light... which will just land us... diverting fairy tales.”

RealityLightMightChoicesIssuesTakenLandFruitComplicatedTalesFairyDeniedFairy TaleShedDeliberateTheoreticalStrategicMessyOversimplification
Book:Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meaning of Life
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“"Biblical theology" refers to something more precise than theology that is faithful to the Bible. It might be helpful to draw a contrast: at the risk of oversimplification, systematic theology tends to organize theology topically and with an eye cast on its contemporary relevance, while biblical theology tends to organize the same biblical material so that it is easier to see the distinctive contribution of each biblical book and human author, and to trace the trajectories of themes across the Bible so we see how the books of the Bible hold together.”

HumansBookMightEyeTogetherRiskMaterialsEasierDrawsCastsTheologyContemporaryFaithfulThemeContributionHelpfulContrastBiblicalOrganizePreciseRelevanceSystematicDistinctiveTrajectoryOversimplification
Author:D. A. Carson
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“The 'environmental crisis' has happened because the human household or economy is in conflict at almost every point with the household of nature. We have built our household on the assumption that the natural household is simple and can be simply used. We have assumed increasingly over the last five hundred years that nature is merely a supply of 'raw materials,' and that we may safely possess those materials by taking them.... And so we will be wrong if we attempt to correct what we perceive as 'environmental' problems without correcting the economic oversimplification that caused them.”

IfsYearsHumansMayProblemLastsUsedNaturalSimpleInspiringEconomyFiveHappenedEconomicMaterialsConflictHundredBuiltCrisisEnvironmentalPerceiveAssumptionHouseholdRaw MaterialsCorrectingEnvironmental ProblemsEnvironmental CrisisOversimplification
Book:What Matters?: Economics for a Renewed Commonwealth
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“Poetry leads us to the unstructured sources of our beings, to the unknown, and returns us to our rational, structured selves refreshed. Having once experienced the mystery, plenitude, contradiction, and composure of a work of art, we afterward have a built-in resistance to the slogans and propaganda of oversimplification that have often contributed to the destruction of human life. Poetry is a verbal means to a nonverbal source. It is a motion to no-motion, to the still point of contemplation and deep realization.”

HumansMeanArtStillsSelfMysterySourceReturnBuiltDestructionResistanceRationalRealizationHuman LifePropagandaContemplationContradictionPoetry IsWorks Of ArtSlogansComposureNonverbalPlenitudeOversimplification
Book:Set in motion: essays, interviews, and dialogues
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“With an absurd oversimplification, the 'invention' of the calculus is sometimes ascribed to two men, Newton and Leibniz. In reality, the calculus is the product of a long evolution that was neither initiated nor terminated by Newton and Leibniz, but in which both played a decisive part.”

MenLongTwoSometimesRealityEducationProductsEvolutionMathematicsInventionAbsurdStatisticsNewtonCalculusOversimplification
Book:What is Mathematics?: An Elementary Approach to Ideas and Methods
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“A large number of well-trained scientists outside of evolutionary biology and paleontology have unfortunately gotten the idea that the fossil record is far more Darwinian than it is. This probably comes from the oversimplification inevitable in secondary sources: low-level textbooks semipopular articles, and so on. Also, there is probably some wishful thinking involved. In the years after Darwin, his advocates hoped to find predictable progressions. In general. these have not been found-yet the optimism has died hard and some pure fantasy has crept into textbooks.”

ThinkingYearsWellsIdeasHardFoundLevelsNumbersFantasyRecordsSourceInvolvedPureLowsOptimismScientistDiedInevitableBiologyArticlesFossilsPredictableProgressionLarge NumbersTextbooksWishful ThinkingEvolutionary BiologyLow LevelPaleontologyOversimplification
Author:David M. Raup
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