That sounds a very strange expectation. Most of my life post university I realized most of questions have complex answers, it is never as simple as you expect.
If the author would check how things biology and medicine work currently, I think he will have even more surprises than the fact that counting populations is an approximate endeavor.
>But it’s good to be reminded that we know a lot less about the world than we think. Much of our thinking about the world runs on a statistical edifice of extraordinary complexity, in which raw numbers—like population counts, but also many others—are only the most basic inputs. Thinking about the actual construction of these numbers is important, because it encourages us to have a healthy degree of epistemic humility about the world: we really know much less than we think.
The problem I have with this literary device is that I think it works if most / many questions would fit it then he would go to disapprove it. Using it, for me, kind of indirectly reinforces the idea that "there are many simple answers". Which I came to loathe as it is pushed again and again due to social media. Everything is "clear", "simple", "everybody knows better", "everybody did their research".
How did this literal device make you feel? Interested? Curious? Bored? When I read it my initial instinct was "no, it's definitely not simple, so if that's what are you going to explain me, I will not bother".
anyway it is just a writing style. if you don't like it, fine. If you can't parse it, well, now you can.