**Links to:** [[Complexity]], [[Compression]], [[Misosophy]], [[Metaphysics]], [[Rest]], [[Real and imaginary]], [[Explanation]], [[Science]], [[Cognition]], [[Reductionism]], [[Model]], [[Linearity]], etc. ### See: [[12 Negintelligibility]], where we build upon but challenge a lot of what is said here (which is not only exemplary of this context but exists across much of the literature as a tacit understanding of what simplicity—in scientific explanation—is): >When considering our overall model reduction results, it is worth noting that a model’s accuracy need not always correspond to its adaptiveness …. In some cases, making either coarser- or finer-grained distinctions could be more adaptive for an organism depending on available resources and environmental/behavioral demands. It is also worth noting that, while we have used the terms “correct” and “incorrect” above to describe the model used to generate the data, we acknowledge that “all models are wrong” (Box et al., 2005), and that the important question is not whether we can recover the “true” process used to generate the data, but whether we can arrive at the simplest but accurate explanation for these data. The failures to recover the “true” model … may reflect that a process other than that used to generate the data could have been used to do so in a simpler way. Simpler here means we would have to diverge to a lesser degree from our prior beliefs in order to explain the data under a given model, relative to a more complex model. > >Smith et al 2020, pp. 13-14. %% Define simplicity (and therefore, how it relates to [[Complexity]]): ___ __________ "[[Nietzsche]]'s first works [reveal] an original conception of philosophy and philosophical 'style'. ... Previously philosophy and science, in the desire to speak 'properly' and demonstrate without using images or similes in order to be convincing, repressed metaphor and confined it to the poetic sphere. The philosopher resorted to metaphor only for didactic reasons or as a stopgap, and with great caution. By bestowing highly precise limits on the metaphorical he was able to hide the fact that the conceptual is itself metaphorical. ... [[Nietzsche]] inaugurates a type of philosophy which deliberately uses metaphors, at the risk of being confused with poetry. Such a confusion would not be regrettable in [[Nietzsche]]'s eyes: for the opposition between philosophy and poetry derives from metaphysical thinking; it is based on the ficticious separation of the real and the imaginary, on the no less ficticious separation of the 'faculties'. Philosophy is a form of poetry: speaking in metaphors makes language find its most natural form of expression once more, 'the most accurate, the truest, the simplest' (EH, 'Why I Write Such Excellent Books', Z, 3) means of figurative expression." p.17-18 [[Sarah Kofman]] in [[Nietzsche and Metaphor]] _________ "But simplicity, as a guiding principle in constructing conceptual schemes, is not a clear and unambiguous idea; and it is quite capable of presenting a double or multiple standard." ([[Quine]], [[On what there is]], p. 36). ![[Pasted image 20220917145403.png]] __________ ![[Pasted image 20220917145630.png]] ![[Pasted image 20220917145648.png]]