That’s an interesting statement as it doesn’t always work in other languages. In German (my native language) my first instinct was to translate both words as “einfach” which contains both concepts. In fact, in my online dictionary of choice the word “einfach” is the first entry for both “easy” and “simple”. So if Germans conflate these two it might be because of the language they speak :) But more to the point, I’m wondering how universal the distinction between easy and simple is when other languages cannot express that distinction as easily as in English.
Interesting. My native language, Afrikaans, has a lot of influence from both Dutch and German (as well as a bit from English and quite a bit from Bantu African languages). We say "eenvoudig" for "simple" and "maklik" for "easy". I recognize both the (different) Dutch words Google Translate provides me when I translate to Dutch as similar to the Afrikaans words, but Google Translate translates both to "einfach" when I translate to German. May be German for some reason conflates the meanings. That said, homonyms and homophones that conflate meanings are found in most human languages, and often for meanings that are far easier (or is that simpler ;-)) to distinguish than "simple" and "easy".
If we were to agree that a simple task has low complexity to accomplish, and an easy task requires little energy to accomplish, then conflating them is straightforward, particularly when weighing the mental effort to accomplish the task. (Tying a shoelace is simple: four steps. Tying a shoelace with 5 pound weights on my wrists is still simple, but not easy.) Of course, if you don't agree to these definitions, then the intersection of them is thinner.
That’s an interesting statement as it doesn’t always work in other languages. In German (my native language) my first instinct was to translate both words as “einfach” which contains both concepts. In fact, in my online dictionary of choice the word “einfach” is the first entry for both “easy” and “simple”. So if Germans conflate these two it might be because of the language they speak :) But more to the point, I’m wondering how universal the distinction between easy and simple is when other languages cannot express that distinction as easily as in English.