Words Cause Induced Complexity More Than You Expect
‘This topic is complex!’ How many times have you heard this sentence? Well, it’s often emotional and meaningless
The word 'complex' is so often overused and abused that, in many cases, it communicates an emotional state instead of expressing a meaning. Whatever the topic, most of the ‘complexity’ is induced in that case.
What’s the induced complexity?
Imagine Mr. A has to explain a technical topic to a non-expert, Mr. C, and Mr. A doesn’t understand that topic in depth. Then, imagine that Mr. B comes to describe the same topic to the same non-expert, Mr. C, but Mr. B deeply understands that topic.
The additional clarity Mr. C gets from Mr. B’s explanation compared to Mr. A measures the induced complexity that Mr. A added to the topic due to his superficial understanding. That’s my definition of induced complexity.
Disclaimer: I inferred the above definition from my experience, yet I cannot exclude that someone else already defined the induced complexity as I do. If you know of previous formulations of this kind of complexity, please let me know in a comment.
