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)
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)
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)
Note: 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)
Note: 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)
Note: 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)
Note: 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)
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)
Note: 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)
Note: 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)
Note: 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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
