Adapt
Metadata
- Author: Tim Harford
- ASIN: B004XCFJ4S
- ISBN: 0385670249
- Reference: https://amazon.co.uk/dp/B004XCFJ4S
- Kindle link
Highlights
Yet there is a reason why Tetlock himself hesitates to draw that conclusion: his results clearly show that experts do outperform non-experts. These intelligent, educated and experienced professionals have insights to contribute – it’s just that those insights go only so far. The problem is not the experts; it is the world they inhabit – the world we all inhabit – which is simply too complicated for anyone to analyse with much success. — location: 151
What happens when we look at survival rates in young, dynamic industries? The answer is that failure rates are even higher. — location: 185
The printing press was invented by Johannes Gutenberg, a man who changed the world utterly, and produced the celebrated Gutenberg Bible in 1455. But the Gutenberg Bible was a ruinous project that put him out of business. The centre of the printing industry quickly moved to Venice, where twelve companies were established by 1469. Nine of them were gone in just three years, as the industry fumbled for a profitable business model. — location: 186
Biologists have a word for the way in which solutions emerge from failure: evolution. — location: 227
oh come on.
Given the likely shape of these ever-shifting landscapes, the evolutionary mix of small steps and occasional wild gambles is the best possible way to search for solutions. — location: 281
Evolution is effective because, rather than engaging — location: 282
how do we know evolution is effective?
Failures are culled because bad ideas do not survive long in the market place: — location: 290
define bad and good here! (good ideas are what succeed in the market place) this is idiotic.
Many people assume that top corporate executives must be good for something: the shareholders who pay them handsome salaries certainly do; as do the millions of people who buy books purporting to convey the wisdom of successful business — location: 296
they know how to talk to other execs? this is not entirely meaningless. again relentless requirement for purposiveness.
connections. In short, Palchinsky was bright, energetic, confident – and almost absurdly honest. — location: 366
The Soviet failure revealed itself much more gradually: it was a pathological inability to experiment. — location: 388
space race?!
But Stalin was not interested: he simply wanted the world’s largest hydroelectric project and gave the order to proceed anyway. — location: 401
that can happen in non communist states
Palchinsky’s warnings were ignored, — location: 409
eh? what’s that got to do with the availability of coal?
What Palchinsky realised was that most real-world problems are more complex than we think. They have a human dimension, a local dimension, and are likely to change as circumstances change. His method for dealing with this could be summarised as three ‘Palchinsky principles’: first, seek out new ideas and try new things; second, when trying something new, do it on a scale where failure is survivable; third, seek out feedback and learn from your mistakes as you go along. The first principle could simply be expressed as ‘variation’; the third as ‘selection’. The importance of the middle principle – survivability – is something which will become clear in chapter six, which — location: 416
Ensuring uniformly high standards in more complex situations is much harder: it’s the chief achievement of Starbucks and McDonald’s, and even then the standardisation comes at a price in charm, flexibility and quality. — location: 460
In the next chapter, we’ll see how adaptive organisations need to decentralise and become comfortable with the chaos of different local approaches and the awkwardness of dissent from junior staff. We’ll also see the heroic effort required to force a traditional hierarchy to change its mind. — location: 500
is what i believe to be the truth of this observation affected by what i believe to be the inadequacy of his earlier evolutionary and progressive reasoning?
The three essential steps are: to try new things, in the expectation that some will fail; to make failure survivable, because it will be common; and to make sure that you know when you’ve failed. — location: 570
And distinguishing success from failure, oddly, can be the hardest task of all: arrogant leaders can ignore the distinction; our own denial can blur it; and the sheer complexity of the world can make the distinction hard to draw even for the most objective judge. — location: 575
Bosnia. His comments, which later proved accurate, had been swiftly dismissed by Donald Rumsfeld’s deputy as ‘wildly off the mark’. Pentagon-watchers — location: 681
so ah what does that suggest about expertise again?
commissioned a war game called SIGMA I in 1964, it largely predicted what later happened: a dismal and inexorable escalation into full-blown war. — location: 769
what if that had been the model?
The US turnaround in Iraq had, in fact, begun months before the Haditha massacre and Donald Rumsfeld’s bizarre press conference – it was just that Donald Rumsfeld didn’t know — location: 781
using success to define success (x thing happened with what we define as a successful outcome therefore we shd study it to define success, and vice versa for failure, is in itself a modelling expression of the expertise TH argues against.
The neat concrete symmetry of a FOB would have delighted many a modernist architect, and it made a certain amount of sense tactically, — location: 791
really hate this sort of glib dinner party analogy that freights judgments and observations in on a sidecar of the main thrust lending it spurious authority.
And later, according to one account, when General Casey was pinning a medal on Col. H.’s chest in recognition of his achievements at Tal Afar, he warned him that he was making too many enemies among his commanding officers – for his own sake, Col. H. needed to listen more and argue less. — location: 848
all horribly anecdotal - doesn’t practice what he preaches.
At the time the ferocity of the response was alarming; in retrospect, it was a sign of desperation. — location: 878
jesus.
Good advice was passed around like a girlie magazine among schoolboys. — location: 881
:|
and 2008 or 2009, and we’ve seen that a surprising amount of trial and error was involved. — location: 989
haven’t seen that at all. you’ve had one successful localised approach ignored by top brass.
What Hayek realised, and Allende and Beer did not seem to, was that a complex world is full of knowledge that is localised and fleeting. — location: 1097
Any large organisation faces a basic dilemma between centralisation and decentralisation. — location: 1138
Decisions taken at the centre can be more coordinated, limit wasteful duplication, and may be able to lower average costs because they can spread fixed resources (anything from a marketing department to an aircraft carrier) across a bigger base. But decisions taken at the fringes of an organisation are quick and the local — location: 1140
information will probably be much better, even if the big picture is not clear. — location: 1142
Typically, new equipment (anything from software to a large machine tool) is superior not because it does the same things faster, but because it is more flexible. — location: 1159
To get the most out of that flexibility requires well-trained, adaptable workers with authority to make their own decisions, which is precisely the kind of workforce successful firms seek out or train when they upgrade their machinery or their software. — location: 1160
The lesson is variation, achieved through a pluralistic approach to encouraging new innovations. — location: 1294
As we’ve seen, the market is tremendously innovative – as long as the basic setting is fierce competition to develop super-cheap ideas, such as new software. — location: 1435
this was the point that was argued about moore’s law.
The prize was eventually awarded in September — location: 1636
and they ended up not using it!
Virgin Galactic has since commissioned a larger ship, SpaceShipTwo, with bigger windows and room to float around. — location: 1692
which is a disaster and may never work.
César Hidalgo was responsible for producing the visualisation itself. — location: 2176
The method of reflections eventually converges on a list of simpler and more complex products, and a ranking of the simpler and more complex economies that produce them. Economic sophistication is closely related to income, but not exactly so. Some countries have more sophisticated capacities than income, suggesting they have ‘room to grow’. An example, from data collected in 2000, is South Korea: the world’s eighteenth most sophisticated economy, but not yet quite as rich as that sophistication would suggest it could become. China and India also have plenty of room to grow. Conversely, there are relatively rich but simple economies, which are in a less sustainable position. Intriguingly, they include Greece and the United Arab Emirates, home to Dubai. — location: 2190
The problem seems to be that governments love to back losers: think about the big banks or car companies. The ideal candidate to receive government support seems to be a company that is very big and very unsuccessful. — location: 2222
There is plenty of evidence that charter cities could work in today’s world. There’s Singapore, long a successful independent city state off the coast of Malaysia; Hong Kong, for many years a British enclave on the South China Sea; more recently, Shenzhen, thirty years ago a fishing village not far from Hong Kong, now a city to rival Hong Kong itself after being designated China’s first ‘special economic zone’. Beyond South-East Asia, Dubai has proved – property bubble notwithstanding – that one can build a successful city anywhere. What all four cities have in common with Lübeck, along with their coastal settings, is that they have been governed by different rules from surrounding areas. — location: 2247
this is mental.
We know that urbanisation is good for the planet (because it promotes compact living, smaller dwellings and the use of public transport), and that it is happening anyway. — location: 2253
worth referring to out of the mountains by kilcullen
skyscraper, a Jack Nicklaus-designed golf course, — location: 2273
fffffff
It is due to be finished sometime around 2015. — location: 2274
Charter cities are certainly a bold leap, but surprisingly, they satisfy the conditions for adapting. — location: 2290
lol shenzhen labour screwed.
out. They are on a small enough scale — location: 2291
roffles
And there is a built-in mechanism for distinguishing the successes from the failures: ordinary people, voting with their feet. — location: 2292
are u fuckin joking.