When I worked for the space program, whenever we came to complicated procedures or rules to follow the adage was "our users are rocket scientists or astronauts -their smart enough to handle this 20 page procedure"
Which adage works best for dealing with how your audience uses your software or your processes? should you consider them to be geniuses or idiots?
In general We tend to ignore the cognitive load that our work can impose on a busy person, as engineers our processes and tools usually require extra cognitive effort to learn that is usually an added burden on the user. It never hurts to make things simpler but it does take a lot of design effort to do so -but the value gained (in efficiency, time savings, and lack of human errors getting introduced into the system) is usually additive, even if that user is an astronaut or a lowly cadet...
- I think the article is basically reframing Hanlon's razor: "never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence.."