Purely and simply a bad case of the simples

THE most simplistic argument is that an argument is "simplistic". It is usually an argument without an argument. It seldom has intellectual merit and tends to amount to a veiled implication that whoever advances it has superior intellect capable of comprehending undisclosed complexity. Knowing when simplified or simple ideas and information are simplistic is no simple matter.

Three participants dismissed simple facts advanced by me as "simplistic" at an Amnesty International youth event at which I served on a panel. The noble objective of the Youth Roundtable was to formulate recommendations to the World Economic Forum conference on Africa in June. A young Egyptian said he could, by virtue of his discipline, authoritatively declare internet information to be simplistic. He implied that his superior intellect gave him access to more sophisticated and complex information in libraries and textbooks.

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