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Title: The Logic of Failure: Why Things Go Wrong and What We Can Do to Make Them Right by Dietrich Dorner, Robert Kimber, Rita Kimber, Rita Kimer ISBN: 0-8050-4160-5 Publisher: Henry Holt & Company, Inc. Pub. Date: June, 1996 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $25.00

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Average Customer Rating: 4.5 (8 reviews)

Rating: 4
Summary: Covers Some New Ground on a Critical Topic
Comment: I am totally fascinated at how people acting with good intentions can actually make things worse, the Law of Unintended Consequences. I still want to read some Robert K. Merton who I think identified that law, but in the meantime, this book takes some steps toward figuring it out. I found the experimental portions to be a little dry, but I liked what he learned from them. The main thing I'll remember is how people can be guilty of "ballistic thinking". No, not exposive thinking, but more like shooting from the hip and not being able to adjust the flight of a bullet. With thinking it should be possible.

Rating: 5
Summary: Amazing concepts
Comment: The Logic of Failure is a book that should be required reading for anyone who is involved in political decision making or the design of international assistance programs. In fact this volume plus How Nature Works: The Science of Self-Organized Criticality by Per Bak and Ubiquity: The Science of History by Mark Buchanan should probably be on the reading list of most of those who find themselves in complex situations requiring decisions.

German psychologist Dietrick Dorner is a professor of cognitive behavior at the University of Bamberg and director of the Cognitive Anthropology Project at the Max Planck Institute in Berlin. He is also the inventor of computer simulations that expose the errors in decision making that arise in complex situations. The book The Logic of Failure describes some of this research.

One of the most interesting aspects of Dr. Dorner's work is that much of the behavior, good and bad, elicited from participants in the computer simulations is seen in real settings. Depending upon the situation described, I found myself realizing that my own responses might not have been optimal had I been a test subject. Also surprising was that no matter whether one had the best of intentions or simply took the situation as lightly as a game, the outcome could be disastrous. (As another author, A. G. Cairns-Smith, has written, "Sometimes enthusiastic incompetence is worse than sloth!") Whether the improvement of living conditions among the imaginary Moros of Tanaland in the Sahel of North Africa or in the quality of life of the citizens of the simulated suburb of Greenville, the outcome of the decisions made was obviously highly correlated with the capacity of the test subjects for managing simultaneous, multifaceted, and interconnected analysis of the situations. Some were capable of summing up the key points of the problem, forming plans, taking actions, and assessing outcomes while others simply spun their wheels in an effort to look like they're doing something. Another surprising, one might almost say frightening, point was the almost natural inability of most people to interpret exponential functions, like growth rates, and to misjudge the effectiveness of measures taken to alter the course of outcomes. Real problems like the spread of AIDS in a population were off by a substantial amount and the effectiveness of programs attempting to curb its spread were totally misjudged, leading to an unfounded optimism. This lack of basic understanding of what amounts to compound interest is probably why so many people end up critically in debt because of credit cards.

Given the complexity of life in modern society and the decision making expected of the average citizen, critical thinking like that which Dr. Dorner's computer simulations help develop should be encouraged as early as early grade school. While the work gives some basic concepts that will help the reader improve his own responses to complex decision making, more than anything Dorner's work suggests that society needs to be more tolerant of those who are in stressful positions that require decisions based on inadequate data. It also suggests that it might be best to place individuals who are more skilled at making plans and taking action under these circumstances into positions of authority. Certainly testing of this type might serve as a better means of selecting them.

Rating: 5
Summary: This is a book that matters
Comment: If all politicians, planners, economists, etc. would read this book, understand it, and take it seriously, we would have a different kind of world. Things would start to work and many of the types of disasters that occure over and over again would be significantly reduced in number. This book has a very important message for us.