
Fuck Nuance - chewyshine
http://chronicle.com/article/Is-Nuance-Overrated-/232771/?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
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Zuider
"It’s not that theory should be as simple as possible. But it is true that we
can often make a lot more progress than you’d think when we simplify things in
slightly absurd ways."

Sociologists insisting on greater nuance in new theories is analogous to
archaeologists demanding that more detritus be thrown on the artifacts they
are carefully attempting to reveal.

In any area of thought, premature nuance is the root of all evil. First find
the simplest thing that works. You will get all the nuance you could wish for
as your original clear idea inevitably branches out into a combinatorial
explosion of edge cases and qualifications. Eventually, some vivid idea may
unify all of this complication, but this will only come about if you value
simplicity in the first place. Certainly complexity is a distinctive
characteristic of any mature area of thought, but this comes about as an
emergent side effect of exploring it. If you are content to wallow in
complexity, even to the point of seeing it as desirable and a sign of
sophistication, then you will neither search for nor find that unifying idea.

