Dijkstra argues that people often judge difficult or complicated work as more substantial than work expressed with clarity and simplicity. In his example, an academic audience may interpret a lucid lecture as trivial because the effort required to understand it is low. The ease of comprehension then becomes confused with a lack of intellectual depth.

His wider point is that complexity can acquire prestige of its own. Researchers, teachers and industries may be rewarded for producing intricate systems or explanations, even when simpler alternatives would be more effective. Dijkstra also acknowledges that this tendency can affect the creator, who may become attached to an elaborate solution because it demonstrates ingenuity.

The quotation encourages a distinction between genuine sophistication and unnecessary complication. Clear reasoning may be the result of substantial work rather than evidence that the underlying problem was simple. It therefore cautions against using apparent difficulty as a measure of quality or truth.

Full quotation

“Since the Romans have taught us "Simplex Veri Sigillum"—that is: simplicity is the hallmark of truth—we should know better, but complexity continues to have a morbid attraction. When you give for an academic audience a lecture that is crystal clear from alpha to omega, your audience feels cheated and leaves the lecture hall commenting to each other: "That was rather trivial, wasn’t it?" The sore truth is that complexity sells better. (It is not only the computer industry that has discovered that.) And it is even more diabolical in that we even use the complexity of our own constructs to impress ourselves. I have often been impressed by the cleverness of my own first solutions; invariably the joy of the subsequent discovery how to streamline the argument was tempered by a feeling of regret that my cleverness was unnecessary after all. It is a genuine sacrifice to part from one’s ingenuities, no matter how contorted.”