Very few things are really that complicated. I have succeeded in capturing the essence of things more than a few times for people, that they were able to run with it and start to think well, or acquire a new skill as a result.

It is not just a meme, the NPC thing, people really are generally literally not thinking most of the time. They are in a dreem world, where the boundaries of their selves have been constricted by trauma conditioning. Aka brainwashing. Sophistication generally hides a contradiction two or three levels deep.