They muddy the water, to make it seem deep. — Friedrich Nietzsche

They muddy the water, to make it seem deep.

Author: Friedrich Nietzsche

Insight: We're all surrounded by people who mistake noise for substance. A politician floods the zone with contradictory statements so you stop asking real questions. A company uses jargon-heavy marketing to make a basic product sound revolutionary. Even in our own lives, we sometimes complicate things when we're unsure, hoping complexity looks like depth. The trick is that muddied water actually prevents you from seeing the bottom. Once you wade through the fog of language, the elaborate explanations, the sheer volume of information, you often find something surprisingly simple underneath. Sometimes that simplicity is just "I don't know" or "this isn't actually important." Other times it's a clear, obvious truth that got buried under layers of decoration. What's tricky is that genuine depth and genuine confusion can look similar at first glance. Both require you to slow down and look carefully. The difference is that real depth rewards your attention—the more you examine it, the more sense it makes. But muddied water? The longer you stare, the muddier it gets. Learning to tell the difference is one of the most practical skills you can develop, whether you're evaluating other people's claims or examining your own thinking.

Source: Thus Spoke Zarathustra