A Lot of Detail is the Hallmark of Oversimplification

Sean McClure
2 min readSep 18, 2024

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When one speaks of details they are peeling back the layers and denoting what they see. The internal intricacies that appear before them are taken as machinery, and formulated into symbols and mechanisms.

But what is it they are looking at? The assumption here, one that is never truly defended in any rigorous fashion, is the idea that those pieces are causally connected to the outcome experienced in the real world.

This is the easiest thing to do. Lay down copious symbols and expressions that all look so complicated, yet fail to capture the complex essence of what actually is.

The oversimplification so derided by today’s scientists and engineers is a label they use for anything lacking detail, yet it is detail that smacks of unintelligence and naive exaggeration. It is detail that pretends to be in communication with how nature works. Nature only provides internal mechanisms for the simplest of systems. Details are absolutely disconnected from the emergence that makes nature tick.

A copious display of detailed symbols and arrows and other fanciful gimmicks is the art of the charlatan, not the truth seeker.

Truth exists in the abstract because it is the abstract that does not move when everything else does. You cannot find invariance in detail, only in what detail dies to.

A lot of detail is the hallmark of oversimplification.

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Sean McClure

Independent Scholar; Author of Discovered, Not Designed; Ph.D. Computational Chem; Builder of things; I study and write about science, philosophy, complexity.