Programmers, social engineers, and management consultants are among the many audiences for this useful, thought-provoking...
If it can be built, it can fall apart: a cautionary study in how complex systems can easily go awry.
As systems become more complex, guided by artificial intelligence and algorithms as well as human experience, they become more likely to fail. The result, write one-time derivatives trader and commercial pilot Clearfield and Tilcsik (Univ. of Toronto Rotman School of Management), is that we are now “in the golden age of meltdowns,” confronted on all sides by things that fall apart, whether the financial fortunes of entrepreneurs, the release valves of dam plumbing, or the ailerons of jetliners. The authors examine numerous case studies of how miscommunications and failed checklists figure into disaster, as with one notorious air crash where improperly handled oxygen canisters produced a fatal in-flight fire: “The investigation,” they write, “revealed a morass of mistakes, coincidences, and everyday confusions.” Against this, Clearfield and Tilcsik helpfully propose ways in which the likelihood of disaster or unintended consequences can be lessened: cross-training, for instance, so that members of a team know something of one another’s jobs and responsibilities, and iterative processes of checking and cross-checking. At times, the authors venture into matters of controversy, as when they observe that mandatory diversity training yields more rather than less racist behavior and suggest that “targeted recruitment” of underrepresented groups sends a more positive message: “Help us find a greater variety of promising employees!” Though the underlying argument isn’t new—the authors draw heavily on the work of social scientist Charles Perrow, particularly his 1984 book Normal Accidents—the authors’ body of examples is relatively fresh, if sometimes not so well remembered today—e.g., the journalistic crimes of Jayson Blair, made possible by a complex accounting system that just begged to be gamed.
Programmers, social engineers, and management consultants are among the many audiences for this useful, thought-provoking book.Pub Date: March 20, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-7352-2263-2
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 23, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2018
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
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Hiccups aside, a mostly valuable compendium of irrational thinking, with a handful of blanket corrective maneuvers.
A waggish, cautionary compilation of pitfalls associated with systematic cognitive errors, from novelist Dobelli.
To be human is to err, routinely and with bias. We exercise deviation from logic, writes the author, as much as, and possibly more than, we display optimal reasoning. In an effort to bring awareness to this sorry state of affairs, he has gathered here—in three-page, anecdotally saturated squibs—nearly 100 examples of muddied thinking. Many will ring familiar to readers (Dobelli’s illustrations are not startlingly original, but observant)—e.g., herd instinct and groupthink, hindsight, overconfidence, the lack of an intuitive grasp of probability or statistical reality. Others, if not new, are smartly encapsulated: social loafing, the hourly rate trap, decision fatigue, carrying on with a lost cause (the sunk-cost fallacy). Most of his points stick home: the deformation of professional thinking, of which Mark Twain said, “If your only tool is a hammer, all your problems will be nails”; multitasking is the illusion of attention with potentially dire results if you are eating a sloppy sandwich while driving on a busy street. In his quest for clarity, Dobelli mostly brings shrewdness, skepticism and wariness to bear, but he can also be opaque—e.g., shaping the details of history “into a consistent story...we speak about ‘understanding,’ but these things cannot be understood in the traditional sense. We simply build the meaning into them afterward.” Well, yes. And if we are to be wary of stories, what are we to make of his many telling anecdotes when he counsels, “Anecdotes are a particularly tricky sort of cherry picking....To rebuff an anecdote is difficult because it is a mini-story, and we know how vulnerable our brains are to those”?
Hiccups aside, a mostly valuable compendium of irrational thinking, with a handful of blanket corrective maneuvers.Pub Date: May 14, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-06-221968-8
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 5, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2013
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