Everything Is Obvious: How Common Sense Fails Us

Whenever our government leaders fail to solve a problem such as reducing unemployment or stopping terrorism, a lot of people, including some fairly learned pundits, complain that the solution would be easy if our leaders just used some common sense. Similarly, when business decisions go poorly, such as a heavily promoted new product failing, critics say that the mistake could easily have been avoided if the company's CEO had just used common sense. But, as "Everything is Obvious," a fascinating book by Duncan Watts, points out, applying "common sense" answers to major political and economic problems is equally, if not more, unlikely to yield a good result.Watts begins by pointing out the difference between individual “common sense” decisions and attempting to use those same solutions on a business-wide or society-wide basis. Looking in all directions before driving into traffic makes an accident less likely because you only need to take into account a few other drivers over a limited period of time. The nation’s economy, on the other hand, is affected by thousands of businesses and millions of individuals throughout the world, interacting in a highly complex manner. And, as Watts notes over and over, groups operate in a vastly different manner than individuals do.In “Everything is Obvious,” Watts explores and debunks many of the common myths that affect “commons sense” thinking. He notes the tendency to try to explain a highly successful phenomenon, like the “Harry Potter” books, simply by listing its attributes. In essence, it’s an argument that “Harry Potter” succeeded because it was more like “Harry Potter” than anything else, and not how or why any or all of those attributes contributed to the success. Part of the reason for blockbusters like “Potter” is that success breeds success. The more people who like something, the more that others will want to try it and find themselves liking it as well. He points to an experiment in which people were asked to select among a variety of songs to download. Some proved more popular than others, of course. But, when people saw how many people had already downloaded each of the songs, the popular ones became much more popular as a result.The music experiment is one of the reasons why finding answers to sociologically problems has proved more difficult than finding answers to physical ones, Watts notes that physical phenomena can be easily measured and their relationships determined. Once we had accurate telescopes and measuring devices, early astronomers measured the movements of stars and planets, and eventually Newton promulgated his laws. Similarly, in medicine, we can determine if a particular drug is effective in fighting a disease by performing a controlled experiment. Unfortunately, as Watts points out, you can’t invade half of Iraq to determine whether it’s the right thing to do. Sociologists and historians can examine history to determine what happened, but that result may well have been a fluke, since you only fight a war one time. Further, it’s almost always impossible to isolate a single reason, or even the combination of reasons, for why something succeeded or failed.From a literary standpoint, “Everything Is Obvious” is a highly entertaining read. Watts fills the book with familiar anecdotes (Sony’s failed decision to push Betamax instead of Matushita’s VHS format) and other not-so-familiar ones (how the theft of the Mona Lisa in the early 20th century contributed to its popularity). Trivia buffs will have hours of fun just going through the book for its entertainment value alone. But, along the way, Watts is able to poke holes in some very commonly held misconceptions that affect not just the thinking of the average person but those making decisions as well. And, by the way, the “representative person” myth, namely that you seek to determine the behavior of a group by isolating a representative person and figuring out how and why he or she acts is doomed to failure simply because it ignores the group dynamic.As for finding solutions to the “common sense” problem, Watts’s book is somewhat short on answers, in large part because the types of problems he addresses still often aren’t susceptible to scientific solutions in practice. Fortunately, with the advent of the Internet and social media, we can now perform some experiments, like the music sampling one, on a large enough scale and with enough variations, to begin to get some answers. And, as he points out, companies that already practice “measure and react” planning are finding a lot of success.I enjoyed “Everything Is Obvious” a great deal, although at times I found Watts a bit more interested in giving readers the benefit of all the “goodies” his research had unearthed as opposed to writing a more disciplined, highly structured book. So, it’s possible to lose sight of the forest for the trees at times here. However, this book is not a doctoral dissertation or a manual for CEO’s and planners. Instead, it’s a breezy attempt to give the average person better insight into how and why we try, and usually fail, to solve some major problems through “common sense.” And, while it’s not an answer to many problems, common sense tells me that a lot of people will have fun reading “Everything is Obvious.”

As a published, self-taught sociologist among whose mentors are some of the same people at Columbia as Watts It is no accident that I find many of the ideas and examples in the book familiar. However, it is hard to describe my passionate excitement as I read almost every page. I believe the ideas are important and it is wonderful to see them organized in such an accessible way.Sometimes one can look at the world almost as the gestalt drawings that can be seen as either a drinking glass or two faces. I suspect that some (many) readers of this book will see one view and not be able to see the other. In fact, I read with great interest some of the other reviews and could see that was the case. One reviewer talked of how "liberals" and "conservatives" would react to the book. I would have thought he might have first suggested some method of verifying his opinion especially in the light of the part of the book that refers to studies that show that our judgment of others' political beliefs are a mirror of our stereotypes. Another viewed the books as being about decisions and referred to a rational choice economist even though many chapters of the book built up to a strong argument against rational choice, not just because we are irrational, but it is a bias and heuristic we use to view the world that is fundamentally flawed.That being said, the conclusions of the arguments out of context might seem so radical that they would be silly at first glance: the Mona Lisa is not as great a painting as it is cracked up to be, Steve Jobs is overrated in Apple's success, for instance. But even if when you think about it you are not surprised by his ideas that people get rich as much luck as hard work and talent, books become best sellers for essentially random reasons, there many not be any such thing as "influentials", experts and predictions are usually wrong and other such things he goes beyond a deconstructionist program. He suggests some ideas to measure the results of what do and to clarify what are just stories and what are things we can hang our hats on.One thing that only implies and I recommend considering is how it affects us as individuals. It suggests a way of thinking that can remove a weight from us. For instance, he talks about how meaningless the idea of an "economy," or a "nation" and so on is. I would go farther and point out that "Obama" is just a story we make up out of fragments of information. He does explain in several places about how we paint over the complexity of the world with coherent stories that hide the complexity. If someone can ask the question "why doesn't Obama fix the economy?" the book explains well why the idea of an "economy" is not something we can get our hands on and why we do not have any way of knowing when something happens in society what caused it. Thus, the idea that a person could cause something to happen that affects so many people in any determined way is absurd. I suspect that people that want simple deterministic explanations will feel uncomfortable with the idea that we are hundreds of years from learning enough about the social world to make much of a dent, much less "fixing the economy." On a personal level it is liberating to realize this. It is hard to get too upset at made up people's effect on imaginary objects. It is like getting really mad at the hunter for killing Bambi's mom. You have to get over it. The tests he carefully develops about what we can and can't know are useful in day-to-day life and help create perspective.If we spend our time being angry at congress, Obama, liberals, conservatives or whoever we choose to blame we wind up in a situation of learned helplessness that numbs our senses and robs us of motivation. Though the project is huge this book suggests how the Internet, new communication technology, advancement in modeling and our thinking about the social world is putting us at the threshold of things we can do that can make a difference. The dogs that were shocked in the learned helplessness experiment that could turn off the shock thrived. This book provides a useful ideas of things we can actually do to improve the social world that creates us.

I've been saying for years that books like seven habits of highly effective people, or books about the characteristics of great companies are only valid if you can show that not so effective people and not so great companies don't also have the same characteristics. This is the first book I've read that explicitly makes that point. So I may be a little biased since the author agrees with me. But the author gives excellent explanations of how we use circular reasoning and other flawed thinking to lead us astray. If I was going to deduct half a star, it would be for the fact that I'm not sure most readers will agree with his definition of common sense; it seems bent a little to fit the book, and his suggestions in the last couple of chapters don't seem to have fully considered the ramifications. But overall I really liked it and I underlined a lot of passages. He points out that many people have grandiose ideas for society, based on their own assumptions, and that such ideas often fail spectacularly. I recommend this book. You don't have to agree with every sentence in it to get a lot out of it. Read it. Because I said so.

I learn this book from the marketing class, and finish it while I am waiting for the flight. And think about the material form the book for the entire trip. I won’t share too much details, but it definitely worth to read it, and read it again.

I recall enjoyed this but was disappointed when it came to an abrupt end. Lots of references to other works and papers have given me a great list of things to read next though. There's some subtle arguments in here and much that seems obvious along the way, but probably wasn't . That I guess is the whole argument. I began as an engineer and shunned the social sciences but while we are none of us just atoms or resultant forces we are all.complex thinking people, all different but all the same just in different ways. A good read and the sort of thing I wish more people would read.

Brief ReviewBuy 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 ReviewDuncan 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...

Read this and you will be able to critique almost every other book putting forward an ill-researched thesis based on major 'success stories' like Google or Facebook or Harry Potter. For example, did you know that at one stage Google tried and failed to sell out for $1.6m ?This book documents the traps that our pattern matching brains fall into, and how we are strongly programmed to back-fit explanations onto observations. This leads us to massively underestimate the sheer randomness of events.Luck really does play a far more important role than we all think.

Watt's book is the first work concerned explicitly with sociology I have read. Having been a career scientist, I realised on reading this superb book just how narrow my view on the study of human behaviour has been.I thoroughly concur with the other 5-star reviewers in why this book should be read by anyone with an interest in how and why humans do things - whether hard science, leisure, sport or indeed anything else. A superb achievement.

Not realy sure what I was expecting but it all got a bit bogged down for me. I have a postgrad degree in social science and I found parts of this a bit like wading through custard so I'm not sure if this is really for the general reader... The notion of 'common sense' is something I find problematic but I'm not sure an advocate of it would have been convinced by the author that it was of little use.