It is the habit of those under pressure to equate their personal understanding of something with its complexity or utility. Even something that might be understood with some additional effort or persistence of engagement is dismissed as not useful because it is not immediately understood. If I were to evaluate the utility of an artefact such as a document that must be understood to be useful I would contrast between those artefacts that are easy to understand in the first reading with those that are only understood after multiple readings. I would make a further distinction of those items that after being understood are recognised by those who now understand them to have value.
My preferred artefact of all of those covered by the above convolution is those artefacts that require multiple readings prior to complete understanding being attained, and then continue to have a respectful recognition of value from those who now understand them. I proposed that everybody who considers these various types of artefacts would have the same preference.
There is a temptation to prefer the artefacts that are fully understood on their first reading and that are also then on immediately first consuming them recognised as having enduring value. However, I believe this category of artefacts only reveal truth that those consuming are ready to consume. For those not ready they fall into my first preferred category and require subsequent readings prior to being fully understood and appriciated.
This tempting exception is in fact merely an example of a general case. Creating an artefact that cannot be fully comprehended on the first reading should be the intention in all cases. Simplicity is context specific. Given the number of possible contexts is infinite it is impossible to make something simple for all contexts simultaneously.
In all cases an artefact that cannot be comprehended on its first consumption is either incomprehensible, requires further knowledge to be acquired by those consuming it before it is appreciated, or requires a change in the underlying values or beliefs of those consuming it before it can be accepted as having value.
The initial intention of incomprehensibility is of course no guarantee of the second criteria – which is to produce artefacts considered to have enduring value by those who understand them. However, for those who understand it to consider it to have enduring value it must have some relationship to the future knowledge, beliefs, and values of those who consume it.
Not all artefacts created with the intention of being incomprehensible will have enduring value to those who understand them. But I believe those created with the intention of being only comprehensible on multiple consumptions will have a better chance of having enduring value than those created with the intention of non-contextualised simplicity. As non-contextualised simplistically doesn’t exist, aiming for it will have unintended consequences.
There is no path that begins with being initially comprehensible on first consumption that can create enduring value without itself including all possible differences in knowledge, beliefs, and values that might be reflected between subsequent consumptions or in the path to understanding or appreciating the artefact’s enduring value.
Matthew’s law might therefore be that non-specific simplification always reduces enduring value.
The solution is reversible simplification or leading simplification. These represent a disciplined simplification that retains traceability to the original complexity, or a tentative pre simplification more closely resembling an hypothesis.
And yet:
“Explanations exist; they have existed for all time; there is always a well-known solution to every human problem — neat, plausible, and wrong.” – H. L. Mencken