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Problems So Complex That Only Simpletons Can Solve Them?

Jim Mason
2 min readFeb 5, 2025

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We humans are in big trouble

Photo by Library of Congress on Unsplash

It should be clear by now that Donald Trump imagines himself to be a visionary who can remake the world with bold, decisive actions. He apparently thinks that, like Alexander the Great, he can solve complicated problems by simple actions like cutting the Gordian Knot, and in doing so he will be seen in history as a Great Man.

Among other dreams, he imagines that he will take over Canada, Greenland, and now Gaza, and that he will demolish and remake the U.S. government and economy as a more efficient and wealthy oligarchy.

Such delusions would be sad enough for Trump the old man, but much worse is the fact that enough voters in the U.S. were fooled or deluded into re-electing him as their President. His actions in pursuit of his delusions are already creating great damage.

It seems to be a flaw in our human psychology that when problems seem too complicated to understand, many of us favor leaders who claim to be able to solve them by simple means — ones that they can understand.

Facing complex existential crises of overpopulation, climate, warfare, and wealth inequality, we humans are choosing fools to lead us.

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Jim Mason
Jim Mason

Written by Jim Mason

I study language, cognition, and humans as social animals. You can support me by joining Medium at https://jmason37-80878.medium.com/membership

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