I’d like to coin a term: Simple World Fallacy.
The world is complex. Human behavior is complex; if it weren’t, we’d be better at predicting and managing it.
Science is complex. The human genome has 3.2 billion base pairs, and a deletion, extra copy, or other variation at any location on the genome may interact with mutations at who-knows-how-many other locations. Environmental factors can affect whether a gene is expressed, and in some cases people with a pathogenic variant don’t go on to develop the associated disease, for reasons we don’t understand. We don’t even have clear definitions of what it means to be living; is a virus alive, or a human without brain activity, or a fertilized egg without a brain or heart?
People who embrace the Simple World Fallacy believe complex issues have simple solutions that anyone with common sense can understand in an hour of internet browsing. Someone with a mentally ill relative once asked me how he could learn about the illness “without having to read an entire book.”
Another asked skeptically if there was anything one could learn in a social psychology PhD program that couldn’t be learned from the Bible.
A child died at a local water park on a slide designed by two men who "lacked technical expertise to design a properly functioning water slide” (per the indictment).
This Simple World Fallacy is reflected in beliefs like the following:
We can end crime by imposing draconian punishments (e.g., cutting off a hand for theft).
Alcoholism and addiction are merely character flaws.
We can treat diseases without anyone understanding them or the mechanism by which the “cure” we’re being sold works.
Poverty is almost always a choice; environmental factors are irrelevant.
Deadly, complex diseases like cancer or COVID have simple, natural remedies like juicing or vitamins.
We know as much as research scientists and physicians with 10+ years of medical training and are fully capable of determining when the global scientific consensus is wrong because a handful of fringe ‘experts’ on YouTube say so.
People of color would be successful if they were just willing to work.
Gay and transgender people could simply choose not to be.
People with depression or anxiety could snap out of it if they wanted to.
People in health care and pharma only care about financial gain, so they can't be trusted.
The world isn't that simple.
