A pretty basic assumption of this site is that keeping things simple is better for you and better for your customers or users. As part of that assumption, I think companies that focus on simplicity will be most successful (though they need to do it well).

Bob Sullivan says complexity is profitable:

“Most people just kind of surrender in the face of all this confusion. And a confused consumer is a profitable consumer. It’s much easier to make people pay extra and lose a whole lot of money when they’ve given up keeping track of what their real costs are.

There’s a great interview with Sullivan on NPR’s Fresh Air. He talks about hidden fees, unethical term changes, and email scams.

Complexity, like a magician’s banter, is a distraction for big company sleight of hand.

Via Josh.

Simplexity is a term being used to describe the relationship between simplicity and complexity. Without that label, it’s something I’ve thought about for some time.

A simple interface can hide a complex system. Think of how little I know about how my car works, yet I’m able to drive it without problems. Anything that cuts through the clutter is a simplexity solution. A popular Web example: a search engine ranking the best resources for your input, choosing from millions of pages.

The Laws of Simplicity say that simplicity and complexity need each other. Without complexity, there can be no simple solution. Or, rather, there would be no complex solution to make better.

For more “head in the clouds” thoughts on this topic, see how simplicity and complexity are alike.

Via Duffy

The problem: getting wind power to third world countries. Standard wind turbines are too expensive, especially since they need to be massive and near heavy winds to work efficiently.

“In a conventional wind generator, gears help transfer the motion of the spinning blades to a turbine where an electric current is induced. The Windbelt is simpler and more efficient in light breezes—a magnet mounted on a vibrating membrane simply oscillates between wire coils.” — Popular Mechanics

In the video below, see 28 year-old inventor of the Windbelt talk about his cheap, simple, and innovative device.

via Josh

The title–in fact, all–of this post comes from the book The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, a book about knowing what you don’t know.

“I noticed that very intelligent and informed person were at no advantage over cabdrivers in their predictions, but there was a crucial difference. Cabdrivers did no believe that they understood as much as learned people–really, they were not the experts and they knew it. Nobody knew anything, but elite thinkers thought that they knew more than the rest because they were elite thinkers, and if you’re a member of the elite, you automatically know more than the nonelite.”

Knowing nothing can be good. And yes, knowing too much can be bad.

Just try not to think like a technician (or a member of the elite).