Everything is Obvious: Why Common Sense is Nonsense [Paperback]

Brief Review

Buy this book for an easy-to-read and solidly researched guide into how human beings think and make decisions. Do not, however, expect to discover much substance on how to correct or manage these cognitive flaws.

Longer Review

Duncan Watts has written an important book that should be read by managers, politicians and leaders of every kind. Although it won't be because these are just the sort of people who DON'T think they need this sort of help!

The key message I took away was that 'common sense' (Watts describes what this can be thought of) is useful in our everyday lives. However, despite the value we place on it, our simple, intuitive understanding of the world is simply not good enough when it comes to explaining the past, understanding the present or planning for the future. Or, in other words, we should not reply upon our simplistic mental models to explain the world.

Thus, the world is far more complex than our brains can comprehend.

Whilst this might sound obvious, Watts demonstrates time and time again how people and organisations have relied on pretty flaky thinking in a wide variety of settings. And whilst I'd read about many of these type of cognitive failings before, it was enjoyable to read Watt's take upon them.

The difficulty for us - including you and me dear reader - is that, even though we may know about these cognitive failings, we are still going to suffer from them. This is the way our brains, all of our brains, are wired. This is how we think and decide. Indeed, the cognitive failings Watts describes are a bit like those A-level Psychology optical illusions you're probably familiar with. Even though you know you're looking at an optical illusion, you still suffer from the illusion despite yourself!

Thus, as Watt's points out, we need to be very self-aware and understand how we and everyone else actually thinks. Which is why, I guess, I found Watt's book a little lacking.

I was hoping that his book would provide more of a solid framework for circumventing our intellectual weaknesses. To be fair, he does give some brief suggestions on how to test ideas in a more scientific manner (which is what his book is all about). Unfortunately for me, this latter part of the book is very light on detail and paints a picture of how to do this with very broad brush strokes.

So, in conclusion, I'm glad I read this book. I got a lot out of it and can recommend it to you.

I did think, however, that it was more of a 'How To' book than it actually is. Which should have been, I guess, obvious...

Guess it reflects the zeitgeist that (a) it's even necessary to write a defence of doing social science, and that the term 'science' can be properly applied to the study of social phenomena and (b) that this gets written by someone from Yahoo! research. Who even knew that Yahoo! had a social science research department. Every so often Watts lets the cat out of the bag by referring to 'social and marketing' scientists, but this is a decent book nonetheless.

It explains well why social science is worth doing, and why it's not the same as physics. It presents some useful insights into what we can actually learn from sociology - the book is worth reading for the discussion of the 'obvious' conclusions of the American Soldier study. It's mainly liberal in both senses of the word - a wide ranging survey from a human-centred perspective that is concerned with fairness in the egalitarian sense. Some hopeful insights into homophily (why we hang out with people like ourselves). Some good stuff about how intuition and 'automatic thinking' can be misleading.

If I have a big disagreement it's with his faith in the web, and social networking, as a research tool. His closing words are: "Merton was right: Social Science still has not found its Kepler. But three hundred years after Alexander Pope argued that the proper study of mankind should lie not in the heavens but in ourselves, we have finally found our telescope." This is kind of moving, but I don't think it's right. Research on the web is interesting and can point to lots of interesting phenomena, but it's not the same as studying humanity. It's not just a matter of sample bias (not everyone uses the web, or uses it in the same way) but also ignores the very real possibility that the way we interact on the web is not at all like we act in other aspects of life.

A good book and well worth reading all the same. Made me think a lot about my own work as an industry analyst, and about the way in which the company where I work manages its people.

Cautions to other readers first (some prompted by previous reviews), although personally I've given it 5.

Caution 1: If you've got a background in Sociology or Social Psychology, + knowledge of Complexity Theory, most of the individual insights shouldn't surprise you much - although there's some nice empirical stuff you may not know of. However see the positives.

Caution 2: It's not a magic-bullet "Here's the problem and how to circumvent it" manual in the style of Management Guru books - face it people that's a dead end.

Caution 3: I don't think it's a book for anyone with a strict judgemental belief system.

Positives: It brings a number of lines of thought together very, very well. Not magic bullets, but the best consciousness-raising guide for the various messes which might be worrying people who read this review. A great help for making sense of a troubled world.

If you have ever thought that certain people must be wrong because they are being too simplistic about complex problems - Radio Jocks, politicians doing soundbites, journalists talking about controversial topics, your boss who has just been on a strategy workshop ... this book might be a great source of sanity.