[watters]

I find that the vast majority of assessments like this are rooted in the mistaken belief that there are common, well-understood, and widely shared meanings for words like "simple" and "complex".

The post isn't observing a lack of desire for simplicity, they're observing a very common case where people evaluate "simple" relative to their own familiarity with tools or techniques rather than a comparison of perceiver-independent properties of the tools and techniques vs their alternatives.

[frou_dh]

This is also evident in the extremely overused phrase "simple yet powerful" that software libraries/tools/etc use when pitching themselves. Everyone apparently thinks their own inventions are Simple Yet Powerful.

https://github.com/search?q=%22simple+yet+powerful%22&type=C...

[feoren]

You are probably already aware of this excellent talk that discusses exactly the points you made: Simple Made Easy by Rich Hickey. I assume this has already been linked 30 times in response to this article but here it is again:

https://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-Easy/

[nottorp]

Let's take cars. Is it "simple" to have one tablet on the dashboard for all controls? Or having physical buttons for commonly used functions is actually the "simple" option?

[rawgabbit]

There are two people involved in this scenario: the car driver and the car manufacturer. For the car driver, physical buttons are simpler (less cognitive load and safer to operate). For the car manufacturer, a single tablet is simpler (less manufacturing complexity and cheaper).

EDIT. I forgot with the Right to Repair issue, there is a third person, the neighborhood general mechanic. With physical controls, the mechanic is more likely to be able to repair the broken switch/electrical relay. With the tablet, the mechanic cannot.

[guntars]

The simple option is no dashboard at all. The AC can be set at the service center.