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Duncan Watts

Everything Is Obvious

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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? And does higher pay incentivize people to work harder?
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-explanations that seem obvious once we know the answer-are less useful than they seem. Watts shows how commonsense reasoning and history conspire to mislead us into thinking 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.
Only by understanding how and when common sense fails can we improve how we plan for the future, as well as understand the present-an argument that has important implications in politics, business, marketing, and even everyday life.
This book is currently unavailable
418 printed pages
Copyright owner
Bookwire
Original publication
2011
Publication year
2011
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Quotes

  • Стас Поздняковhas quoted9 months ago
    own observations of the world is whether these patterns are driven by psychological preferences or structural constraints
  • Стас Поздняковhas quoted9 months ago
    many times more successful than the average. But what we don’t know is how—or even if—the forces of social influence operating at the level of the individual drive inequality and unpredictability at the scale of entire markets
  • Стас Поздняковhas quoted9 months ago
    Surely the real nature of science is not to exhibit any particular form at all, but rather to follow scientific procedures—of theory, observation, and experiment—that incrementally and iteratively chip away at the mysteries of the world. And surely the point of these procedures is not to discover laws of any particular kind, but rather to figure things out—to solve problems. So the less we worry about looking for general laws in social science, and the more we worry about solving actual problems, the more progress we are likely to make

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