Simplicity Rules

by

Leo Crocker Rogers

From volcanoes to the rain on our crops, simplicity rules. Nature knows.

The complex fail sooner and more often. The complex is convenient for a time. It allows passage to life-modes previously unknown, but there is a price to pay when an element of the complex fails and takes down the whole program or machine.

The bottom line of all things is to carry the message or to live in a way that is known. Simplicity is transparency. Any time we see the complex, be it in people, in the fly-by-wire airliners, in contracts concocted by attorneys, or in computer mind-bender programs, transparency disappears and confusion appears. The confusion may be latent, but it is there. When transparency disappears, it is because a dark mental cloud is overhead waiting to rain on our parade of life.

One of the greatest advantages to simplicity is its repairability. When the complex fails, it is often repaired by substituting even more complexity, or the failing part or program (Microsoft’s Vista) is thrown away. Both paths are wrong for they either lead to more confusion and non-transparency or waste.

**** Can you repair your car? In 1980, I could. I have six radios in my house. Five are digital. Only the one analog -- rotating variable capacitor tuner – receives all the broadcast stations. ****

Some complexity, however, is not as complex as seen at first blush. There are many things that appear complex but are simpler than we may think.

Start with a complex computer program that has a billion instructions. That is a lot of rules to follow – any one of which, when not followed, can scramble the entire program. However, upon examination, one can see that there are patterns in the program. In fact, we may see as many as 1,000 repeatable sequences of instructions – rules. If we then label each of the 1,000 with a number, and any time that instruction arises, we simply type in the representative number, we have decreased the number of instructions from one billion to one million. Then exploring even further, we see that most often, a certain set of instruction are repeated a thousand times more than all else, thus we can reduce the one billion down to a thousand or so. In fact, a real sharp computer programer works backward from what I have just subscribed. They have sub-routines that contain upward of a million rules and when they design a program, the program while containing perhaps a billion instructions, is written with 100 subroutines. Thus, in a sense, the complex is made simple.

Finish with you and me. We are complex. We have arms, legs, eyes, nose, ears, torso, and a left and right side brain. But think of this. When we were formed in our mother’s womb, all the complex functions created – eyes, arms, toes, heart -- used the same simple chemicals. Nothing complex.

A real smart creator can use oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, and a few other elements to form a human body -- or are you ready – the earth. And of course it is just a step away to recognize that the entire universe – the entire universe – is simply a tree of major elements and a few sprinklings of other secondary elements to form everything there is.

What is interesting, however, is that real smart creators, don’t back engineer – start with a complex and work to the simple -- they start with the simple and appear to create the complex.

Now, the whole point of this is to say that when we think and when we create, we need to do so in simplicity.

Why?

Because the simple in reliable.

Because the simple is predictable.

Because the simple is easily repairable.

Because the simple cost less.

Because the simple is understandable.

Because the simple reduces fear.

And the less fear there is, the less hate there is, and the less hate there is, the more love there is.

We fear computers.

We rear attorneys.

We fear high technology.

We really fear doctors.

Why? Because they are not transparent.

Here is the litmus test to removing the fear.

Can the computer programmer tell you in 20 words or less, what his program is doing?

Can the attorney in 20 words or less tell you what the document means?

Can the technologist in 20 words of less tell you what the technology does?

Can the medical doctor tell you why you heal or if he can do anything more than a fix?

Can the person to whom you are speaking tell you how they feel in 20 words of less?

Let us say they can. That is a quantum leap for mankind.

In 2010, let each of us, as we create, build, design, convey, do so, so others can understand.

Perhaps, we cannot understand the guts of a cell phone, but we should be able to understand what it does. When we don’t, we inadvertently carry the burden of complexity with us.

We don’t need that. It occupies our thought so that the serious and good things of life are displaced – like prayer. This latent fear of the complex, not knowing things we need not know but have pounded into us – disease commercials on t.v. – is a burden on free thought. We don’t need it, and we should stand porter at our door of thought to exclude such.

It is simple, the more complex things with which we deal, the fewer things get our full attention, and the less effective we are in life.

And just to keep us humble, the previously thought to be VERY complex human genes, are being found to be simpler and simpler. (See Wikipedia) "Surprisingly, the number of human genes seems to be less than a factor of two greater than that of many much simpler organisms, such as the roundworm and the fruit fly."

Simple:

Dive! Dive! Dive!

SOS – Save Our Ship ... - - - ...

I love you.

Think before leaping.

Owe no man.

Tora. Tora. Tora.

Don’t do that.

Principle is absolute.

Fear is bad.

God is good.

Principle permeates.

And finally, a Kiss. (I Cor 16:20; II Cor 13:12; I The 5:26; I Pet 5:14)