If someone is trying to design a better plane, it doesn't make sense to tell them to just convince everyone asking for a better plane to stop traveling. It is nonsense and seems like you have unrelated ideas that you are trying to shoehorn into this question.
That's what I see a lot of in software right now.
I'm merely suggesting that maybe a regular two-story family house is enough. Maybe even one story, depending on needs.
Note that only the first sentence of my comment said "don't automate". The other eight described a way to automate with less complexity when you have to.
I think this is the problem - you are imagining a question that isn't being asked by telling someone to just not make that problem.
This person asked for book on managing complexity. You are saying 'just don't make software as complex and do it by not making software at all'. That is two steps removed from being any sort of answer to this question.
Step one to solving a problem is often to find a technique by which time is no longer stacked against you. Then you can attack the other thing in peace.
You didn't do that, your solution was 'don't write software'.
If someone asks for tips on organizing their kitchen and without knowing anything more than that, you say 'make your kitchen smaller and don't use your kitchen' do you think that is reasonable advice?
Sure, if someone built tens of industrial kitchens every month for regular families and just in the middle of nowhere (which is what i see a lot of in software) and then asked "how can I reduce my kitchen expenses" I would suggest "how about going forward you make your kitchens smaller and don't build them at all where nobody uses them?"
You are answering a question that no one would ever ask and you can't answer it because you don't have any other information other than the actual question that was asked.
Just because you don't see how it's a good suggestion doesn't mean it's not.
@kqr, thank you for your insights. While it's not exactly relevant to my problem domain (self-driving cars - lots of essential complexity there!), it's still generally useful advice.
Software is expensive to write, but it's even more expensive to maintain. That's why my favorite projects are those that delete large amounts of now-useless code. Not writing it in the first place is an even better alternative.
If someone asks "how do I get to this place" with no other context and the advice is "stay home and do nothing" that doesn't seem patronizing to you?