Simplexity Why Simple Things Become Complex (and How Complex Things Can Be Made Simple)

by Kluger, Jeffrey

• ISBN13: 9781401303013
• ISBN10: 1401303013
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-05-01
• Publisher: Hachette Books

Summary

"Using real world examples, such as traffic flow, politics and baby linguistics, the author makes the theories of 'simplexity' accessible to the layperson...Kluger makes complex science seem simple." --Kirkus "Kluger makes the modern world comprehensible...his astonishing discoveries require no exaggeration..[his] findings are likely to incite controversy, confirming his contention that explaining simplicity and complexity is never as straightforward as it seems." --Publishers Weekly "Simplexity...is a study of human behavior, and the way we perceive things and events, and how our perception frequently causes us to make wrong assumptions and to perceive simplicity (or complexity) where it does not exist, The book is sure to be a deserved hit among the ever-growing Freakonomics crowd." -Booklist Why are the instruction manuals for cell phones incomprehensible? Why is a truck driver's job as hard as a CEO's? How can 10 percent of every medical dollar cure 90 percent of the world's disease? Why do bad teams win so many games? Complexity, as any scientist will tell you, is a slippery idea. Things that seem complicated can be astoundingly simple; things that seem simple can be dizzyingly complex. A houseplant may be more intricate than a manufacturing plant. A colony of garden ants may be more complicated than a community of people. A sentence may be richer than a book, a couplet more complicated than a song. These and other paradoxes are driving a whole new science--simplexity--that is redefining how we look at the world and using that new view to improve our lives in fields as diverse as economics, biology, cosmology, chemistry, psychology, politics, child development, the arts, and more. Seen through the lens of this surprising new science, the world becomes a delicate place filled with predictable patterns--patterns we often fail to see as we're time and again fooled by our instincts, by our fear, by the size of things, and even by their beauty. InSimplexity, Timesenior writer Jeffrey Kluger shows how a drinking straw can save thousands of lives; how a million cars can be on the streets but just a few hundred of them can lead to gridlock; how investors behave like atoms; how arithmetic governs abstract art and physics drives jazz; why swatting a TV indeed makes it work better. As simplexity moves from the research lab into popular consciousness it will challenge our models for modern living. Jeffrey Kluger adeptly translates newly evolving theory into a delightful theory of everything that will have you rethinking the rules of business, family, art--your world.

Table of Contents

Why is the stock market so hard to predict? Confused by Everyone Else	p. 18
Why is it so hard to leave a burning building or an endangered city? Confused by Instincts	p. 47
How does a single bullet start a world war? Confused by Social Structure	p. 77
Why do the jobs that require the greatest skills often pay the least? Why do companies with the least to sell often earn the most? Confused by Payoffs	p. 113
Why do people, mice, and worlds die when they do? Confused by Scale	p. 137
Why do bad teams win so many games and good teams lose so many? Confused by Objective	p. 159
Why do we always worry about the wrong things? Confused by Fear	p. 189
Why is a baby the best linguist in any room? Confused by Silence	p. 210
Why are your cell phone and camera so absurdly complicated? Confused by Flexibility	p. 232
Why are only 10 percent of the world's medical resources used to treat 90 percent of its ills? Confused by False Targets	p. 255
Why does complexity science fall flat in the arts? Confused by Loveliness	p. 282
Epilogue	p. 303
Author's Notes	p. 309
Index	p. 313
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