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
BOOK REVIEW
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If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
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