The artic­le descri­bes a radi­cal­ly sim­pli­fy­ing model of opi­ni­on for­ma­ti­on pro­ces­ses. The model abs­tracts away almost ever­y­thing. A very com­mon reac­tion to such an approach is the objec­tion that important fac­tors are not included. The artic­le anti­ci­pa­tes ten objec­tions of this type and tri­es to show how to cope with them wit­hout giving up the radi­cal­ly sim­pli­fy­ing approach. The stra­te­gies that we use can be sum­ma­ri­zed to a cer­tain heu­ristics. Fol­lo­wing the prin­ci­ples of this heu­ristics will often allow at least a par­ti­al qua­li­ta­ti­ve under­stan­ding of real world phe­no­me­na. In many are­as we pro­ba­b­ly can­not hope for more.