Simplicity

Another post inspired by a one-liner by R.

So - what was it this time?

"The most complicated people are actually the simplest".

I will add the second half of the sentence -
"You just need to find the right angle from which that is the case".

This is easiest to explain to a mathematician, for there it often happens that one mathematician somewhere notices a pattern, and comes up with a very convoluted way of proving that it indeed exists, using tens of esoteric results and tricks most other mathematicians can barely follow. And then, a few years later, some other guy sees the results, claims it is obvious and then presents a simple 3-line proof.

But that is the essence - you just need to find the proper framework, the proper angle from which everything will make perfect sense.

However - most of us are accustomed to just one viewpoint - their own. So everyone vastly different from themselves seems horribly complicated. Because they are kind of like me, only different in this, this, this, this, this, this and this. But to the person himself, everything he is and does is simple and logical and makes perfect sense - because he himself is his own reference point. This is akin to a mathematician who is so at home in one narrow subfield that he sees everything else only from that angle. Not an uncommon sight, mind you. When you have only a hammer, everything will eventually start looking like a nail.

Taking an appropriate viewpoint is hard, however, because you need experience. Experience with many different people - so you could form different categories. Experience with different types of behavior patterns, so you know which things tend to group together with which other, and how different patterns tend to interact. Skill in abstracting away the unnecessary details and reducing all of the behavior groups down to just one or two key principles - so that the model would still remain workable. And then skill in determining which of these groups and principles are actually applicable to the current case at hand and which should be discarded as irrelevant. Everything following Occam's razor, attempting to find the simplest possible explanation that is consistent with the available facts.

In short, the skills a good psychologist needs to possess are not at all unlike those a skilled scientist needs. And the differences between a beginner and a seasoned expert are just as pronounced... as are the differences between someone who just studies the topic as opposed to someone who seems to live and breathe it.