i wonder how much social conservatives pretending not to understand eg butler even in accessible language is due to their world view fetishising "simplicity" as a guide to truth to such an extent that even the idea of something being complex is threatening?

if something that is complex can be true, then you cannot always use "common sense" (which relies on simple relationships between things) to divine the truth of something. sometimes simple things are true, but they're never true *because* they are simple

to be clear: complex vs simple here is not to do with language or register, but the concepts themselves; you can express simple concepts in florid language and vice versa

100% - some (not all) of how we judge whether something is "simple" is whether it feels easy on the mind, and of course what is salient, easy, less mental work to us will be informed hugely by what ideas are dominant in our world https://twitter.com/fag_tips/status/1308707985888292866?s=19

oh and before you say that this is all either nonsense or something you can only be curious about with advanced humanities degrees or if you read loads of theory: my degrees are in lingusitics and cognitive science and i work in computers, stem vs hums isnt the issue here