: Looking for a verb that means "making something looks very simple by ignoring its complexity or details" I'm looking for a verb that means "making something looks very simple by ignoring its

Vote Up Vote Down

Abstraction?

Abstracting complicated social problems to bad influence of media on “disturbed kids” is basically ignoring the main roots of the problem
and putting the fault on the media.

Other suggestions (apart from oversimplification) are: curtail (curtailing complicated...), restrict (restricting complicated social...)...

(0)

Vote Up Vote Down

No one except an optometrist would get this, but "hyperopic" would be a great adjective to use for this meaning.

I know you want a verb, so what about "overdistilling" or "hyperdistilling"? I lean toward the latter -- it has a hyperbolic feel to it.

(0)

Vote Up Vote Down

You are talking about oversimplification or misrepresentation. I think oversimplification is probably the best choice to replace reduce, but you would have to alter the construction of the sentence slightly to make it work. For example,

"Oversimplifying social problems by attributing them to bad media influence on disturbed kids is basically ignoring the main root of the problem and putting the fault on the media."

Or, to use the active voice,

"Attributing social problems to bad media influence on disturbed kids oversimplifies the problem, ignores the root cause, and puts the fault on the media."

(0)