The Myth Of Total Simplicity

To wish for reality to be simple is not irrational in itself.  This is because some preferences are involuntary and having preferences does not mean a person will believe things on that basis as opposed to the basis of logical proof.  Moreover, many people, in different ways, would love for some aspect of reality to be simpler than it is for the ease of knowledge and living that might come about from this.  This is not and never is epistemologically or morally problematic on its own.  The same is not true of allowing a desire for simplicity to dictate one's beliefs, actions, and capacity for abstract reasoning.  At this point, someone deviates from reason and prizes their petty preferences above reality itself, even though almost nothing about reality is changed by sheer preference.

While there are simpler and more precise, complicated, or nuanced aspects of any philosophical truth or idea--and every truth or idea is inherently philosophical--pure simplicity is a myth.  Whether on the level of how logical facts or ideas relate to each other, how much effort must be put in towards abandoning fallacies and assumptions, or some other side of rationalistic truths and the pursuit of them, there is never pure simplicity.  At best, there is comparative or partial simplicity, but even the only self-evident truths (logical axioms themselves, not even what follows from them or how they govern all other things), literally the most "basic" truths despite still being so abstract, are not simple except when it comes to some sides of them.

Some things are more or less simple than others, but simplicity itself is at most one attribute out of several that is possessed by something at least complex enough to not only have one aspect (nothing truly does have only one aspect, even if the one thing anything has in common with everything else is that everything is either logically necessary, logically possible, or logically impossible and is thus at least consistent with or excluded from possibility by necessary truths).  Nothing is purely simple, and nothing is purely complex.  Total simplicity is a myth, a logical impossibility, just like total complexity.  Everything has simple and more nuanced aspects that are often thoroughly intertwined.  Even the fundamental fact that nothing can violate the laws of logic has both its simple and extremely complex facets.

It is true, yes, that logical truths and a person's understanding of logical truths can have a distinct simplicity.  After all, recognizing some truths as self-evident and all others as hinging on them can simplify a great deal, as does looking to reason and not to the conflicting words of random people one respects.  All the same, to even grasp this much, one must look to the very core of all reality, which is not God, nature, society, or even one's own self-evident consciousness, but the laws of logic, which requires that one intentionally forsake assumptions and reason out actual necessary truths in their place, some of which are more nuanced than others and all of which transcend mere practicality.  Aside from the potential complexity of these truths and how they intersect, the personal process of letting go of stupid or unproven ideas can also be very emotionally complicated.  Then there are also far more hyper-precise or complex logical truths that even knowing logical axioms very thoroughly and directly will not reveal on its own.  Simplicity can be discovered in small degrees, but it does not reveal reality. 

People who want simplicity but do not have the willingness to not believe that reality is the how they want it to be just because they want it to be that way are goddamn fools, but always for one of two reasons if not both: they are too inept, or stupid, to understand even the more simple philosophical truths (such as that reality is not determined by preference), too shallow and self-absorbed to care, or both of these pathetic things all at once.  Someone too frightened or irrational to even take the first steps of rationalism are the inferiors of rationalists, mere intellectual insects by comparison to the small minority of people who have submitted themselves to reason.  Simplicity is what they want because they are too simplistic at present to even forsake the most obvious fallacies for reasons beyond preference.