5 stars out of 5
I couldn't put this book down it was so interesting. I got it a long time ago, but hadn't started it since I have a million books on my shelves that I haven't read (I have even more in storage). Someone mentioned it one day, and I read the introduction and went from there.
The author's thesis is that the world is not as predictable as it seems. You may shrug and say "Yeah, so, I know the world is unpredictable" but then look around and see how many people are running around doing the following things:
a. trying to predict what will happen in the future - what the deficit will look like, how much oil will be around, how much global warming is going to effect the earth, etc.
b. trying to attribute causes to observed events - journalists, historians, economists, politicians, etc. are all very guilty of this. Politicians especially. Geez, if I had a dime for every time a politician claimed credit for fixing the economy. But of course they never take the blame when the economy tanks.
c. Read "how-to-get-rich" books that chronicle the lives of successful people as if we could figure out the "cause" of their wealth.
Luck and chance have more to do with life than we give them credit for, and we wind up wasting a lot of time trying to figure out what "caused" this and what "caused" that.
The ego of the author is pretty large and it sometimes distracts from the book, but overall it was a fascinating read with a lot to say for it. I skipped some of the technical parts, but overall a tremendous book.
1 comment:
I haven't heard of this book, but this philosophy sounds very similar to a philosophy of mine. You also see this in sportswriting ALL THE TIME. Hindsight is 20/20. Everyone questions coaching decisions after the fact, but no one is questioning them as they happen. It will blow you away how dead-wrong many sports writers are about this trade, that draft, this game decision, how well a team does, etc. But they conveniently laugh it off and re-hash the past. To quote Simpsons, "Well, folks, when you're right 52% of the time, you're wrong 48% of the time!"
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