That is not the definition of simple.That is the definition of decomplected, and the talk says that decomplected things tend to be simple, while complected things tend to be complex.
[EDIT] Well, it seems you are indeed somewhat correct about this. The talk does say Simple means: “One braid, One fold”. Decomplected is still the word for unbraided, and untangled. But it does seem the talk implies as well that Simple would mean “One braid”. Source: https://github.com/matthiasn/talk-transcripts/blob/master/Hickey_Rich/SimpleMadeEasy.md
I still feel the talk does try to position simple and easy as orthogonal, not really as opposite. Like you can have familiar easy things that are simple, but they can also be complex, similarly you can have hard unfamiliar things that are simple. I’m also not sure the talk implies easy and familiar are synonymous. Familiarity can make certain things easier, but there are things that are easy and unfamiliar and yet they can still be complex. Global Variables tend to be easy even to people unfamiliar with programming in general for example. The idea of scopes is hard to grasp, yet it makes for simpler code, because it doesn’t tangle the function to its environment. But obviously, I’m saying most of this from my perspective on Simple, and thus from what I described prior, which includes decomplected (but I call it independent instead).
You got a lot of upvotes though, so I’ll take it I probably shouldn’t pretend that this is a shared set of values within the Clojure community. I’ll just make a blog post about it then, as something I personally endorse and promote, and won’t insinuate that this is true as well of the Clojure community.
Thanks all!