High up peoples’ list of culprits for the credit crunch is complexity. The accusation? That certain financial products were incomprehensible to all but a tiny few. Buyers and sellers, therefore, had no idea what they were trading. Executives devised entire strategies on businesses they did not understand. Regulators and ratings agencies flapped about in the dark.

The solution is to make things simpler, right? Wrong. For that supposes humans are opposed to complexity when in fact they create it whenever possible. Many sociologists see the process of making the simple complicated as one method social groups employ to help identify themselves. Linguists sometimes refer to “esoterogeny” where speakers add verbal tricks in order to make their language harder for outsiders to understand and to foster inclusiveness.