Why Simple Answers Win (Even When They’re Wrong)
You’ve seen it happen. A journalist asks a politician a direct question, and the politician just… doesn’t answer it. They circle, hedge, qualify. You think: classic evasive politician.
But lately I’ve been wondering – what if sometimes it’s not evasion? What if the question is the problem?
Take energy policy. Someone asks “did renewables cause electricity prices to rise?” – and it’s framed like there must be one culprit. A clean yes or no. renewables = bad, or renewables = good.
The journalist asking that probably knows it’s a loaded frame. They asked it anyway. Because “can you walk us through the twelve interacting factors shaping wholesale electricity prices over the past decade?” doesn’t make a good clip. It doesn’t fit in a headline. “Renewables: hero or villain?” is the story they can sell.
So they ask the yes/no question, knowing they’ll get a messy answer. And when the politician hedges, they get the evasive politician clip they were probably hoping for. Everyone’s playing the game.
Electricity prices go up and down for a dozen reasons at once – fuel costs, infrastructure, market rules, global shocks. Renewables might be lowering generation costs while prices still rise because of something else entirely. It’s a tangled mess of interacting parts.
So when a politician answers honestly – “well, it’s complicated, depends on context, multiple factors” – it doesn’t land. It sounds like dodging. The more accurate the answer, the more it sounds like a non-answer.
Meanwhile, someone saying “renewables are pushing up your power bills” sounds clear and confident. And if your bills have actually gone up, and you’ve heard this before, it clicks. Your experience and the explanation just fit together. Belief solidified.
But it’s not just that the simple story fits your experience. It’s that you want it to be true. Because “it’s complicated” means there’s no one to blame. No villain. No one to be angry at. And that doesn’t sit right.
We don’t want simple answers because we’re stupid. We want them because they give us someone to point at. “Renewables did it” is satisfying in a way that “market dynamics, policy timing, and infrastructure constraints interacting over years” never will be. One has a bad guy. The other has a shrug.
Which is why these beliefs are so hard to shift. You’re not rejecting evidence. You’re giving up on the idea that someone owes you an explanation you can actually act on.