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Comment by fragmede | Hacker News Reader

That believes that the world can be simplified into dichotomies, or at least, simplified. Sometimes problems are complex, and the solutions to them necessarily so. For example, cancer. I order to begin to understand that problem, you have to understand the utter complex scheme it has devised in order to exist. A 20 minute YouTube video isn't going to be able to begin to cover the basics of the subject, although there are some good ones, with clever analogies.

Just because something is difficult to understand doesn't mean it's fraud, although if someone is trying to dazzle you with clever words and names of institutions you recognize because they are selling you something, there's a good chance they're lying to you in order to get some money from you.

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No but almost all good ideas can be reduced down to a few sentences if you're good at explaining things. It's a different kind of intelligence than what's commonly called IQ but it's something like that regardless.

Sure the explanation will oversimplify a lot but then you can expand it recursively if needed, you gotta start somewhere.

Problems can be holistically complex but the building blocks of those problem usually aren't.

If the presenter can't divide a problem until it reaches a series of independently simple concepts, then there's usually something fishy going on.

Too simplistic view which I also used to believe in maybe ~10 years ago. There's a class of problems where such approach doesn't apply.

I agree with you in that there exist such a class of problems, but Occam's razor apply in far more circumstances than it does not. When confronted with novel information under pressure of quick decisions, you have to take the most likely correct path.

> That believes that the world can be simplified into dichotomies, or at least, simplified. Sometimes problems are complex, and the solutions to them necessarily so. For example, cancer

You just simplified most of the problems people work on down to cancer complexity. Ironic, isn't it?

That's also simply not the case, most people are building CRUD apps with some frontend code and some accessory stuff like build systems etc., which while complex, can still be expressed in very plain, easy to understand language for anyone who's a bit technical.

Does not excuse the Claude slop.

If you are saying that there are problems more complex in this world than cancer to be solved, I'm not denying you.

Solving the problem right in front of you is easy. Stepping back and asking: is that a problem to be solved, is infinitely harder.

I did not use Claude to write my comment, so I don't know where that is coming from.

I meant the explanation does not excuse Claude's slop prose, not your comment.

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