Why do people...

Mike, it's, err, not that easy....

Don, overcast downtown York

All of the following is a generalisation. People are lazy. People neither have the time nor the inclination to think for themselves. Indeed given the complexities of modern life it may be impossible to think about all the issues we face - there just are not enough hours in the day. Overwhelmingly people believe what they want to believe. It is easier that way. We are more fearful than we perhaps care to admit. We live in a world where we are bombarded with overt and covert messages that there is a quick solution to everything as long as we buy it (a temporary solution to a small part of the problem) or vote for it (give the job of providing the solution to someone else)or merely choose to believe in it (give the solution to the problem to something or someone who probably does not even exist). We live in a world where we have to trust so much - our cars, the traffic lights, airport security, the airplane, the pilot, air traffic control - all kinds of technology which we could not create ourselves and then there are all those threats we have no control over - wars, plagues, terrorism, fincial meltdown, global warming. And if we actually do want to dig into something we find there is too much information and mis-information and various others with vested interests who muddy the water or deceive or....hell just turn on the tv and watch Eastenders and turn into a vegetable. It's easier that way.

quote:

Originally posted by Mike Dudley:
... allow themselves to be seduced into thinking that there are simple solutions to complicated problems? Discuss.

Like everyone else, they try to make some sense of life, whose boundaries always seem to be just over the horizon.

It's a basic need of the kind of comfort that comes with the illusion of understanding.

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quote:

Originally posted by Mike Dudley:
[Why do people] allow themselves to be seduced into thinking that there are simple solutions to complicated problems? Discuss.

I think I can put that more simply:
"Why do people think there are simple solutions to complicated problems?"

Answers:
(a) because people are lazy
(b) because people will go for the first thing they think of and stick with it until they can prove it wrong. The first thing is bound to be simple, and because of (a) they never get round to proving it wrong
(c) because they have not been taught to think analytically, or critically, and simply can't process a complicated solution
(d) because a complicated solution is likely to be difficult to implement - people wrongly assume a simple solution will be easy to implement - in fact, there's no correlation
(e) because, outside one's immediately personal sphere, problems have a political component in their solution and politicians always address the feeblest of their audience
(f) because sometimes there are simple solutions to complicated problems, just as there are complicated solutions to simple problems