Small causes become difficult to recognize after enough consequences pile on top.

Origins get buried under everything that follows. A small misalignment early on produces a response, which produces an adjustment, which produces a workaround, and after enough layers the situation looks complicated in its own right. The complexity is real, but it is sediment, and underneath it there is often one simple thing that went sideways.

With a tangled problem, try asking when it did not exist. Find the last moment things worked and look at what changed right after. The answer is often smaller and older than the mess suggests.