Simplexity: Why Simple Things Become Complex (and How Complex Things Can Be Made Simple), by Jeffrey Kluger

Simplexity: Why Simple Things Become Complex (and How Complex Things Can Be Made Simple)
By Jeffrey Kluger
Hyperion
Three stars
Reviewed by Jessica Gribble

I wear a Timex watch with several functions: time (of course), time 2, chronograph, timer, and alarm. I’ve been wearing a watch like this for almost two decades, but I can only use a few of its functions properly. Once I get past start and stop in the chronograph, I’m helpless. When I try to reset, I usually end up starting the timer for laps 2 through 12. How many people, I wonder, are actually timing laps with their watches?

What does this have to do with Simplexity, by Jeffrey Kluger? In this case, something as simple as a watch, originally intended to tell time, has become overwhelmingly complex. But maybe it was complex already? A watch is made of delicately balanced gears or a tiny computer. One of the main points of Simplexity is that it’s hard to tell the difference between the complex and the simple.

There are a lot of books like this being published lately. Some are business books, others are science, and many include social science and technology, like Simplexity. They all look at our familiar world in a new way, studying various business or social systems to see how they react differently from what common sense would suggest. Kluger, a senior writer for Time magazine, introduces us to the new scientific discipline of simplexity, which draws on research in fields including economics, biology, cosmology, chemistry, psychology, politics, and the arts to see patterns that make our world both full of complexity and reducible—with the right point of view—to simplicity.

One of the case studies that I found particularly interesting involves our partisan political climate. Kluger discusses how people adopt a new political idea or abandon one they already hold. Computer models suggest that most people resist changing their opinions until a particular number of people around them have changed theirs as well. The threshold of people who need to feel the same way is low on an arcane issue like the alternative minimum tax and much higher on a polarizing one like abortion. The power of strongly held beliefs keeps the system balanced—democracies reach a stalemate rather than descending into turmoil.

My major frustration with this book was that complexity and simplicity seem so elusive throughout. I thought they’d be defined at the end of the prologue, after the “hook” story that makes you want to read the book, but I never felt that Kluger could quite pin down his topic. The supporting details were fascinating, but I spent a lot of time thinking “so what? What’s the point? What are simplexity researchers doing that other researchers—sociologists, economists, mathematicians, doctors—aren’t?” In the end, I decided that the point was that we should look at problems in more than one way, making sure to take both a broad view and a close-up view.

In general, I love books that include new ways to look at the world and that teach me information that plays well at parties. For instance, did you know that football is more complex than baseball? (That’s an academic way to start a brawl.) Kluger is a very clear writer, translating complexity into easy-to-handle language. The book combines social science with some hard science and applies them to important situations like work, disease prevention, danger, our perception of risk, technology, art, linguistics, traffic, and politics. We often don’t truly understand the complexity—or simplicity—of the systems that surround us. Simplexity is a great first step in better understanding ourselves, our fellow humans, and our environment.