Simplism is the ideology of simple answers for complex problems and it appears to be gaining popularity as high-level reading skills decline around the world.  People without high-level reading skills also tend to lack high-level thinking skills and their need for simplicity is met by simplism delivered from a range of sources, including politicians. However, complex problems by definition can be viewed from multiple competing perspectives and have multiple possible solutions; so, simple answers are unlikely to be informative or represent reality.  While trying to provide intelligible clear explanations in this blog [see ‘When less is more from describing digital twins to protoplasm‘ on February 22nd, 2023], I have always tried to avoid over-simplification or any drift towards simplism.  I fear that my uncompromising approach to complex issues and the decline in high-level readers globally has led to a steady decline in the readership of this blog over the past twelve months (to about half the number in 2022 and the lowest level since 2015).  Or perhaps I have just run out of interesting original topics to share in posts.  In either case, my decision to stop writing regularly posts announced in September [see ‘Reflecting on the future of RealizeEngineering‘ on September 20th, 2023] seems appropriate.  This is the 600th post and represents 11 years of weekly posting (for those readers working out the mathematics: there were 21 posts before I started weekly posting), which seems an appropriate moment to change the pattern to monthly posts, on the first Wednesday of each month.

Source: Simon Kuper, The end of reading and the rise of simplism, FT Weekend Magazine, October 21/22, 2023.