Why is the Mona Lisa the most famous painting in the world? Why did Facebook succeed when other social networking sites failed? Did the surge in Iraq really lead to less violence? How much can CEO’s impact the performance of their companies? And does higher pay incentivize people to work hard?
If you think the answers to these questions are a matter of common sense, think again. As sociologist and network science pioneer Duncan Watts explains in this provocative book, the explanations that we give for the outcomes that we observe in life—explanation that seem obvious once we know the answer—are less useful than they seem.
Drawing on the latest scientific research, along with a wealth of historical and contemporary examples, Watts shows how common sense reasoning and history conspire to mislead us into believing that we understand more about the world of human behavior than we do; and in turn, why attempts to predict, manage, or manipulate social and economic systems so often go awry.
It seems obvious, for example, that people respond to incentives; yet policy makers and managers alike frequently fail to anticipate how people will respond to the incentives they create. Social trends often seem to have been driven by certain influential people; yet marketers have been unable to identify these “influencers” in advance. And although successful products or companies always seem in retrospect to have succeeded because of their unique qualities, predicting the qualities of the next hit product or hot company is notoriously difficult even for experienced professionals.
Only by understanding how and when common sense fails, Watts argues, can we improve how we plan for the future, as well as understand the present—an argument that has important implications in politics, business, and marketing, as well as in science and everyday life.
Duncan J. Watts (born 1971) is an Australian researcher and a principal research scientist at Yahoo! Research, where he directs the Human Social Dynamics group. He is also a past external faculty member of the Santa Fe Institute and a former professor of sociology at Columbia University, where he headed the Collective Dynamics Group. He is author of the book Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age and Everything is Obvious Once You Know the Answer.
醍醐灌顶,过两年再来拜读 常识都是误区 一、个体行为:两个欧洲国家遗体器官捐献率,天差地别。听到的人用常识去解释,很容易就偏离到了宗教、受教育程度等等,但是真实原因是医院给出的默认选项不同。 二、集体行为 1.蒙娜丽莎之所以价值连城,不单单因为其艺术价值,更多来...
评分我们有过学问恐慌,有过知识焦虑,如果可以把知识和常识一刀两断的话,那可能还有过常识匮乏。我们的这种担心,来自于一种不足的状态,或者自认为不足的状态,所以出于本能我们会认为,消除或者消减这种担心的唯一办法就是获取、获取、再获取,只有我们学习了更多的知识,掌握...
这本书的reference和notes部分占了30%,导致我对书的文字量失去了正确判断。读完的感觉不是爽快而是解脱,全书的观点感觉少了一个清晰的抓手,可能只是切断了现象和解释之间的纽带让人更质疑的看待事情。
评分本书很流畅,但缺点在于讲的东西新内容很少,所以只是偶尔有养分而已,当然如果5年前看此书感觉会很不一样,所以timing是真重要的
评分Common Sense篇看完,其中核心点似乎在说明“常识”是人类理解世界的重要框架,但是常识在运用于解释由大量社会成员的活动所造成的现象、事件时,具有很强的误导性,这种误导与人类对于简单因果关系的嗜好,以及对微观与宏观的过渡过程不明有关。
评分看来社会科学仅仅是刚开始啊,混沌学真是让人从科学角度最能体会到命运无常的了,接下来看失控!
评分Correlation isn't causation. History run only once. Prediction is never predictable. Experts fail most of the time. Common sense in non-common.
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