KISS

No, this blog post is not about the act of expressing love, passion, affection, respect, greeting, friendship, peace or good luck.  It is about the KISS principle, an acronym for Keep It Simple Stupid.  The phrase has been widely used as a design principle, which is based on the premise that most systems work best if they are kept simple rather than made complex.  Simplicity should be a key goal in design rather than complexity.  As an engineer, I can relate to this goal, particularly in the case of software-intensive systems.  The oxymoron 'worse is better' is often applied to software systems, where less functionality ('worse') is often preferable to more complex systems ('better'), which can be more difficult to use and prone to bugs.

A simple acronym like KISS, is easy (simple) to remember, rolls off the tongue nicely and is a good philosophy.  But is it?  I don't think so.  At least, not always.  Whether we like it or not, life is incredibly complex.  So how do you apply simplicity to complexity?  Well, it might be argued that any complex problem can be dealt with by breaking it down into simple 'chunks' and dealing with them individually........KISS!  Imagine an electric blanket that the owner switches on one hour prior to going to bed each evening.  On one occasion he notices the bed is cold and checks the plug observing that a 13A fuse is blackened.  He changes the fuse and the blanket appears to work.  Next evening the bed is cold again........bloody fuses!  So Mr Heath Robinson decides to replace the fuse with copper wire - that won't blow mate!  And it didn't, but the following night the bed covers ignite and the house burns down.  The simple 'solution' to the problem ends in a tragedy.  The fuses had been blowing not because of faulty fuses but because of a damaged element in the electric blanket, causing it to draw too much current.  When the fuse was replaced with copper wire, the element got hotter and hotter until it ignited the bed clothes.  The point of this story is that breaking the problem down into manageable 'chunks', dealing with each one separately........KISS........was not the way to deal with the problem.  The fuse blowing was the symptom of the problem, NOT the problem.

I can think of loads of situations in my own life where quick simple fixes have led to longer-term problems.  On the other hand, I do believe simplicity does play an important role in life.  Leonardo da Vinci said "Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication" and Albert Einstein who was a master of understanding complexity, said "If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it yourself."  So I'm not against simplicity in certain situations but it's not the be all and end all of problem solving.  Let me conclude with my own acronym - KISSES - Keeping It Simple Sometimes Endangers Situations........through unintended consequences.