March 19, 2025

Simplicity rarely loses to complexity in battles in the public square.

Jeffrey Toobin, True Crimes and Misdemeanors (2020), The New York Times, Book Review, 23 August, 2020, p.10

When you try to explain anything of even middling complexity, are you in the habit of assuming your listener is someone of equal intelligence? Lesser? Greater? Reflecting on past experience, where does the average intelligence lie, relative to yours?

The KISS exhortation (“Keep it simple, stupid!”) is what every politician should have branded on their forehead, in reverse, so they can read it every morning when they look in the mirror. Whatever you have to say should be the truth, pitched at the very start to the lowest common denominator of intelligence. You can always work up from there.