Range

Author:: David Epstein Full Title:: Range Tags:#media/book

• themes::
  • theme 1
• Summary::
  • summary 1

* highlights from 2021-02-08

* That is, the most effective learning looks inefficient; it looks like falling behind. ([Location 205](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=205))
* Overspecialization can lead to collective tragedy even when every individual separately takes the most reasonable course of action. ([Location 220](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=220))
* increasing specialization has created a “system of parallel trenches” in the quest for innovation. Everyone is digging deeper into their own trench and rarely standing up to look in the next trench over, even though the solution to their problem happens to reside there. ([Location 227](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=227))
* The powerful lesson is that anything in the world can be conquered in the same way. It relies on one very important, and very unspoken, assumption: that chess and golf are representative examples of all the activities that matter to you. ([Location 296](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=296))
* In the most devilishly wicked learning environments, experience will reinforce the exact wrong lessons. ([Location 341](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=341))
* Moravec’s paradox: machines and humans frequently have opposite strengths and weaknesses. ([Location 357](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=357))
* Their brilliance, just like the Polgar brilliance, relies on repetitive structures, which is precisely what made the Polgars’ skill so easy to automate. ([Location 444](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=444))
* Our greatest strength is the exact opposite of narrow specialization. It is the ability to integrate broadly. ([Location 464](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=464))
* “How Not to Teach People to Discover Rules”—that is, by providing rewards for repetitive short-term success with a narrow range of solutions. ([Location 495](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=495))
* “cognitive entrenchment.” His suggestions for avoiding it are about the polar opposite of the strict version of the ten-thousand-hours school of thought: vary challenges within a domain drastically, and, as a fellow researcher put it, insist on “having one foot outside your world.” ([Location 517](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=517))
* “eduction,” to work out guiding principles when given facts or materials, even in the absence of instructions, and even when they had never seen the material before. ([Location 646](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=646))
* To use a common metaphor, premodern people miss the forest for the trees; modern people miss the trees for the forest. ([Location 656](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=656))
* The more they had moved toward modernity, the more powerful their abstract thinking, and the less they had to rely on their concrete experience of the world as a reference point. ([Location 662](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=662))
* Conceptual schemes are flexible, able to arrange information and ideas for a wide variety of uses, and to transfer knowledge between domains. ([Location 677](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=677))
* Our conceptual classification schemes provide a scaffolding for connecting knowledge, making it accessible and flexible. ([Location 680](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=680))
* Where the very thoughts of premodern villagers were circumscribed by their direct experiences, modern minds are comparatively free. This is not to say that one way of life is uniformly better than another. As Arab historiographer Ibn Khaldun, considered a founder of sociology, pointed out centuries ago, a city dweller traveling through the desert will be completely dependent on a nomad to keep him alive. So long as they remain in the desert, the nomad is a genius. ([Location 705](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=705))
* They classify objects by substance (animals, flowers, tools), materials (wood, metal, glass), size (large, small), and color (light, dark), or other property. The ability to move freely, to shift from one category to another, is one of the chief characteristics of ‘abstract thinking.’” ([Location 711](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=711))
* He does not mean this in the simple sense that every computer science major needs an art history class, but rather that everyone needs habits of mind that allow them to dance across disciplines. ([Location 743](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=743))
* They must be taught to think before being taught what to think about. Students come prepared with scientific spectacles, but do not leave carrying a scientific-reasoning Swiss Army knife. ([Location 755](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=755))
* Computational thinking is using abstraction and decomposition when attacking a large complex task,” she wrote. “It is choosing an appropriate representation for a problem.” ([Location 762](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=762))
* “Everyone is so busy doing research they don’t have time to stop and think about the way they’re doing it.” I rushed into extremely specialized scientific research without having learned scientific reasoning. ([Location 777](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=777))
* “Fermi problems,” because Enrico Fermi—who created the first nuclear reactor beneath the University of Chicago football field—constantly made back-of-the-envelope estimates to help him approach problems.* The ultimate lesson of the question was that detailed prior knowledge was less important than a way of thinking. ([Location 783](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=783))
* “how Fermi estimation can cut through bullshit like a hot knife through butter.” It gives anyone consuming numbers, from news articles to advertisements, the ability quickly to sniff out deceptive stats. ([Location 798](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=798))
* They were perfectly capable of learning from experience, but failed at learning without experience. And that is what a rapidly changing, wicked world demands—conceptual reasoning skills that can connect new ideas and work across contexts. ([Location 805](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=805))
* Whether it is the story of Tiger Woods or the Yale law professor known as the Tiger Mother, the message is the same: choose early, focus narrowly, never waver. ([Location 965](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=965))
* breadth of training predicts breadth of transfer. That is, the more contexts in which something is learned, the more the learner creates abstract models, and the less they rely on any particular example. Learners become better at applying their knowledge to a situation they’ve never seen before, which is the essence of creativity. ([Location 1162](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=1162))
* I think when you’re self-taught you experiment more, trying to find the same sound in different places, you learn how to solve problems.” ([Location 1172](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=1172))
* Rather than letting students grapple with some confusion, teachers often responded to their solicitations with hint-giving that morphed a making-connections problem into a using-procedures one. ([Location 1238](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=1238))
* “what they’re actually doing is seeking rules.” They were trying to turn a conceptual problem they didn’t understand into a procedural one they could just execute. ([Location 1242](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=1242))
* (There is a specific Japanese word to describe chalkboard writing that tracks conceptual connections over the course of collective problem solving: bansho.) ([Location 1255](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=1255))
* But for learning that is both durable (it sticks) and flexible (it can be applied broadly), fast and easy is precisely the problem. ([Location 1274](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=1274))
* “desirable difficulties,” obstacles that make learning more challenging, slower, and more frustrating in the short term, but better in the long term. ([Location 1279](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=1279))
* One of those desirable difficulties is known as the “generation effect.” Struggling to generate an answer on your own, even a wrong one, enhances subsequent learning. ([Location 1283](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=1283))
* “hypercorrection effect.” The more confident a learner is of their wrong answer, the better the information sticks when they subsequently learn the right answer. Tolerating big mistakes can create the best learning opportunities. ([Location 1292](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=1292))
* Struggling to retrieve information primes the brain for subsequent learning, even when the retrieval itself is unsuccessful. The struggle is real, and really useful. ([Location 1320](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=1320))
* The group with more and immediate rehearsal opportunity recalled nearly nothing on the pop quiz. Repetition, it turned out, was less important than struggle. ([Location 1340](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=1340))
* If you are doing too well when you test yourself, the simple antidote is to wait longer before practicing the same material again, so that the test will be more difficult when you do. Frustration is not a sign you are not learning, but ease is. ([Location 1345](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=1345))
* The Calculus I teachers who were the best at promoting student overachievement in their own class were somehow not great for their students in the long run. “Professors who excel at promoting contemporaneous student achievement,” the economists wrote, “on average, harm the subsequent performance of their students in more advanced classes.” ([Location 1372](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=1372))
* The feeling of learning, it turns out, is based on before-your-eyes progress, while deep learning is not. “When your intuition says block,” Kornell told me, “you should probably interleave.” ([Location 1437](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=1437))
* Whether the task is mental or physical, interleaving improves the ability to match the right strategy to a problem. That happens to be a hallmark of expert problem solving. Whether chemists, physicists, or political scientists, the most successful problem solvers spend mental energy figuring out what type of problem they are facing before matching a strategy to it, rather than jumping in with memorized procedures. ([Location 1446](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=1446))
* As with all desirable difficulties, the trouble is that a head start comes fast, but deep learning is slow. “The slowest growth,” the researchers wrote, occurs “for the most complex skills.” ([Location 1467](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=1467))
* They could not rely on the same type of problem repeating, so they had to identify underlying conceptual connections in simulated battle threats, or math problems, that they had never actually seen before. They then matched a strategy to each new problem. When a knowledge structure is so flexible that it can be applied effectively even in new domains or extremely novel situations, it is called “far transfer.” ([Location 1476](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=1476))
* Kepler was so far outside the bounds of previous thought that there was no evidence in existence for him to work from. He had to use analogies. ([Location 1498](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=1498))
* Each time he got stuck, Kepler unleashed a fusillade of analogies. Not just light, heat, odor, currents and boatmen, but optics of lenses, balance scales, a broom, magnets, a magnetic broom, orators gazing at a crowd, and more. He interrogated each one ruthlessly, every time alighting on new questions. ([Location 1520](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=1520))
* Deep analogical thinking is the practice of recognizing conceptual similarities in multiple domains or scenarios that may seem to have little in common on the surface. ([Location 1540](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=1540))
* Analogical thinking takes the new and makes it familiar, or takes the familiar and puts it in a new light, and allows humans to reason through problems they have never seen in unfamiliar contexts. It also allows us to understand that which we cannot see at all. ([Location 1545](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=1545))
* The outside view probes for deep structural similarities to the current problem in different ones. The outside view is deeply counterintuitive because it requires a decision maker to ignore unique surface features of the current project, on which they are the expert, and instead look outside for structurally similar analogies. It requires a mindset switch from narrow to broad. ([Location 1634](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=1634))
* Netflix came to a similar conclusion for improving its recommendation algorithm. Decoding movies’ traits to figure out what you like was very complex and less accurate than simply analogizing you to many other customers with similar viewing histories. Instead of predicting what you might like, they examine who you are like, and the complexity is captured therein. ([Location 1680](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=1680))
* What seemed like the single best analogy did not do well on its own. Using a full “reference class” of analogies—the pillar of the outside view—was immensely more accurate. ([Location 1684](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=1684))
* successful problem solvers are more able to determine the deep structure of a problem before they proceed to match a strategy to it. ([Location 1738](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=1738))
* “a problem well put is half-solved.” ([Location 1742](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=1742))
* Keplerian thinking. Faced with an unexpected finding, rather than assuming the current theory is correct and that an observation must be off, the unexpected became an opportunity to venture somewhere new—and analogies served as the wilderness guide. ([Location 1764](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=1764))
* “It’s sort of like the stock market,” he told me. “You need a mixture of strategies.” ([Location 1798](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=1798))
* “set free” by failure to try work that better matched her talents and interests. ([Location 1925](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=1925))
* Learning stuff was less important than learning about oneself. Exploration is not just a whimsical luxury of education; it is a central benefit. ([Location 1959](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=1959))
* Levitt identified one of his own most important skills as “the willingness to jettison” a project or an entire area of study for a better fit. ([Location 1976](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=1976))
* “restriction of range.” That is, because cadets were selected precisely for their Whole Candidate Score, a group of people who are very alike on Whole Candidate Score measures were siphoned from the rest of humanity. ([Location 2016](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=2016))
* The expression “young and foolish,” he wrote, describes the tendency of young adults to gravitate to risky jobs, but it is not foolish at all. It is ideal. ([Location 2045](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=2045))
* “We fail,” he wrote, when we stick with “tasks we don’t have the guts to quit.” ([Location 2053](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=2053))
* As Steven Naifeh said regarding Van Gogh’s life, some “undefinable process of digestion” occurred as diverse experiences accumulated. “I was unaware that I was being prepared,” she told me. “I did not intend to become a leader, I just learned by doing what was needed at the time.” ([Location 2281](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=2281))
* She saw both the power of inclusion and exclusion in diverse Johnstown. She learned resourcefulness as a jack-of-all-trades in the photography business. As a new troop leader with less experience than her charges, she relied on shared leadership. She united stakeholders normally at loggerheads for the United Way campaign. Having never been out of the country until she traveled to international Girl Scout meetings, she learned to quickly find common ground with peers from all over the world. ([Location 2285](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=2285))
* “You have to carry a big basket to bring something home.” ([Location 2290](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=2290))
* “standardization covenant” for the cultural notion that it is rational to trade a winding path of self-exploration for a rigid goal with a head start because it ensures stability. ([Location 2319](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=2319))
* The precise person you are now is fleeting, just like all the other people you’ve been. That feels like the most unexpected result, but it is also the most well documented. ([Location 2348](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=2348))
* With Mischel, he began to study “if-then signatures.” If David is at a giant party, then he seems introverted, but if David is with his team at work, then he seems extroverted. (True.) So is David introverted or extroverted? Well, both, and consistently so. ([Location 2384](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=2384))
* “context principle.” In 2007, Mischel wrote, “The gist of such findings is that the child who is aggressive at home may be less aggressive than most when in school; ([Location 2387](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=2387))
* Instead of asking whether someone is gritty, we should ask when they are. ([Location 2395](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=2395))
* “We discover the possibilities by doing, by trying new activities, building new networks, finding new role models.” We learn who we are in practice, not in theory. ([Location 2422](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=2422))
* Be a flirt with your possible selves.* Rather than a grand plan, find experiments that can be undertaken quickly. “Test-and-learn,” Ibarra told me, “not plan-and-implement.” ([Location 2443](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=2443))
* I propose instead that you don’t commit to anything in the future, but just look at the options available now, and choose those that will give you the most promising range of options afterward. ([Location 2456](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=2456))
* “I know who I am when I see what I do.” ([Location 2469](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=2469))
* “outside-in” thinking: finding solutions in experiences far outside of focused training for the problem itself. ([Location 2582](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=2582))
* Einstellung effect, a psychology term for the tendency of problem solvers to employ only familiar methods even if better ones are available. ([Location 2642](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=2642))
* “Big innovation most often happens when an outsider who may be far away from the surface of the problem reframes the problem in a way that unlocks the solution.” ([Location 2663](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=2663))
* “lateral thinking with withered technology.” ([Location 2886](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=2886))
* The heart of his philosophy was putting cheap, simple technology to use in ways no one else considered. ([Location 2889](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=2889))
* With simple technology, Yokoi’s team sidestepped the hardware arms race and drew the game programming community onto its team. ([Location 2941](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=2941))
* Do not be an engineer, he said, be a producer. “The producer knows that there’s such a thing as a semiconductor, but doesn’t need to know its inner workings. . . . That can be left to the experts.” ([Location 2969](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=2969))
* Given its basic hardware, the Wii was criticized as not innovative. Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen argued that it was actually the most important kind of innovation, an “empowering innovation”—one that creates both new customers and new jobs, like the rise of personal computers before it—because it brought video games to an entirely new (often older) audience. ([Location 2982](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=2982))
    * **Note**: Is most of software like this in that it isusing existing technology in new and interesting ways
* The world, he wrote, is both broad and deep. “We need birds and frogs working together to explore it.” ([Location 3002](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=3002))
* “polymaths,” broad with at least one area of depth. ([Location 3053](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=3053))
* “My inclination is to attack a problem by building a narrative. I figure out the fundamental questions to ask, and if you ask those questions of the people who actually do know their stuff, you are still exactly where you would be if you had all this other knowledge inherently. It’s mosaic building. I just keep putting those tiles together. Imagine me in a network where I didn’t have the ability to access all these people. That really wouldn’t work well.” ([Location 3105](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=3105))
* In high-uncertainty domains—where the fruitful questions themselves were less obvious—teams that included individuals who had worked on a wide variety of technologies were more likely to make a splash. The higher the domain uncertainty, the more important it was to have a high-breadth team member. ([Location 3117](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=3117))
* “When seeking innovation in knowledge-based industries,” they wrote, “it is best to find one ‘super’ individual. If no individual with the necessary combination of diverse knowledge is available, one should form a ‘fantastic’ team.” ([Location 3148](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=3148))
* “Charles Darwin’s greatest works represent interpretative compilations of facts first gathered by others.” He was a lateral-thinking integrator. ([Location 3193](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=3193))
* When the candidate describes his or her work, does he or she tend to focus on the boundaries and the interfaces with other systems?” One serial innovator described his network of enterprise as “a bunch of bobbers hanging in the water that have little thoughts attached to them.” Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda painted the same idea elegantly: “I have a lot of apps open in my brain right now.” ([Location 3199](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=3199))
* Victories were total victories, and defeats were always just a touch of bad luck away from having been victories too. Experts remained undefeated while losing constantly. ([Location 3287](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=3287))
* Superteams beat the wisdom of much larger crowds—in which the predictions of a large group of people are averaged—and they also beat prediction markets, where forecasters “trade” the outcomes of future events like stocks, and the market price represents the crowd prediction. ([Location 3343](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=3343))
* Narrow experts are an invaluable resource, she told me, “but you have to understand that they may have blinders on. So what I try to do is take facts from them, not opinions.” Like polymath inventors, Eastman and Cousins take ravenously from specialists and integrate. ([Location 3372](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=3372))
* Tetlock described the very best forecasters as foxes with dragonfly eyes. Dragonfly eyes are composed of tens of thousands of lenses, each with a different perspective, which are then synthesized in the dragonfly’s brain. ([Location 3377](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=3377))
* A hallmark of interactions on the best teams is what psychologist Jonathan Baron termed “active open-mindedness.” The best forecasters view their own ideas as hypotheses in need of testing. Their aim is not to convince their teammates of their own expertise, but to encourage their teammates to help them falsify their own notions. ([Location 3398](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=3398))
* a personality feature that fought back against that propensity: science curiosity. Not science knowledge, science curiosity. ([Location 3414](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=3414))
* Beneath complexity, hedgehogs tend to see simple, deterministic rules of cause and effect framed by their area of expertise, like repeating patterns on a chessboard. Foxes see complexity in what others mistake for simple cause and effect. They understand that most cause-and-effect relationships are probabilistic, not deterministic. There are unknowns, and luck, and even when history apparently repeats, it does not do so precisely. ([Location 3441](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=3441))
* Another aspect of the forecaster training involved ferociously dissecting prediction results in search of lessons, especially for predictions that turned out bad. They made a wicked learning environment, one with no automatic feedback, a little more kind by creating rigorous feedback at every opportunity. ([Location 3460](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=3460))
* The Challenger decision was not a failure of quantitative analysis. NASA’s real mistake was to rely on quantitative analysis too much. ([Location 3581](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=3581))
* the right numbers did not contain an answer at all. The Challenger decision was truly ambiguous. It was a wicked problem, rife with uncertainty, and outside of previous experience, where demanding more data actually became the problem itself. ([Location 3608](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=3608))
* The process had worked remarkably. The space shuttle was the most complex machine ever built, and all twenty-four flights had returned safely. But on the emergency conference call, that same quantitative culture led them astray. ([Location 3621](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=3621))
* “Dropping one’s tools is a proxy for unlearning, for adaptation, for flexibility,” Weick wrote. “It is the very unwillingness of people to drop their tools that turns some of these dramas into tragedies.” ([Location 3668](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=3668))
* “can do” should have been swapped for what Weick calls a “make do” culture. They needed to improvise rather than throw out information that did not fit the established rubric. ([Location 3686](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=3686))
* “If I make a decision, it is a possession, I take pride in it, I tend to defend it and not listen to those who question it,” Gleason explained. “If I make sense, then this is more dynamic and I listen and I can change it.” He employed what Weick called “hunches held lightly.” ([Location 3698](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=3698))
* A team or organization that is both reliable and flexible, according to Weick, is like a jazz group. There are fundamentals—scales and chords—that every member must overlearn, but those are just tools for sensemaking in a dynamic environment. ([Location 3718](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=3718))
* Togetherness was their most basic tool, the one they didn’t know could be dropped until someone said to drop it. ([Location 3771](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=3771))
* The strategy, strange as it sounds, is to send a mixed message. ([Location 3801](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=3801))
* A level of ambiguity, it seemed, was not harmful. In decision making, it can broaden an organization’s toolbox in a way that is uniquely valuable. ([Location 3811](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=3811))
* But cultures can actually be too internally consistent. ([Location 3833](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=3833))
* effective problem-solving culture was one that balanced standard practice—whatever it happened to be—with forces that pushed in the opposite direction. ([Location 3834](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=3834))
* “Consensus is nice to have, but we shouldn’t be optimizing happiness, we should be optimizing our decisions. I just had a feeling all along that there was something wrong with the culture. We didn’t have a healthy tension in the system.” ([Location 3915](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=3915))
* Geveden saw everywhere a collective culture that nudged conflict into darkened corners. “You almost couldn’t go into a meeting without someone saying, ‘Let’s take that offline,’” he recalled, just as Morton Thiokol had done for the infamous offline caucus. ([Location 3917](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=3917))
* “The chain of communication has to be informal,” he told me, “completely different from the chain of command.” He wanted a culture where everyone had the responsibility to protest if something didn’t feel right. He decided to go prospecting for doubts. ([Location 3920](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=3920))
* there is a difference between the chain of command and the chain of communication, and that the difference represents a healthy cross-pressure. ([Location 3943](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=3943))
* Frances Hesselbein’s “circular management.” Instead of a ladder, the organizational structure was concentric circles, with Hesselbein in the middle. Information could flow in many directions, and anyone in one circle had numerous entry points to communicate with the next circle, rather than just a single superior who acted as a gate. When she explained it to me, it seemed a lot like the kind of incongruence Geveden worked to engender, and the kind that Captain Lesmes wielded: a differentiated chain of command and chain of communication that produced incongruence, and thus a healthy tension. ([Location 3947](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=3947))
* Seeing small pieces of a larger jigsaw puzzle in isolation, no matter how hi-def the picture, is insufficient to grapple with humanity’s greatest challenges. We have long known the laws of thermodynamics, but struggle to predict the spread of a forest fire. We know how cells work, but can’t predict the poetry that will be written by a human made up of them. The frog’s-eye view of individual parts is not enough. A healthy ecosystem needs biodiversity. ([Location 3990](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=3990))
* “deliberate amateur.” The word “amateur,” she pointed out, did not originate as an insult, but comes from the Latin word for a person who adores a particular endeavor. “A paradox of innovation and mastery is that breakthroughs often occur when you start down a road, but wander off for a ways and pretend as if you have just begun,” ([Location 4074](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=4074))
* You have people walking around with all the knowledge of humanity on their phone, but they have no idea how to integrate it. We don’t train people in thinking or reasoning.” ([Location 4124](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=4124))
* Human creativity, he said, is basically an “import/export business of ideas.” ([Location 4182](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=4182))
* bring new skills to an old problem, or a new problem to old skills. ([Location 4189](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=4189))
* To recap: work that builds bridges between disparate pieces of knowledge is less likely to be funded, less likely to appear in famous journals, more likely to be ignored upon publication, and then more likely in the long run to be a smash hit in the library of human knowledge. ([Location 4203](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=4203))
    * **Note**: If people are ignoring it you're probably onto something 
* society had right off the shelf a huge amount of knowledge from investments made in a curiosity that at the time had no use. ([Location 4236](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=4236))
* “Scientific progress on a broad front results from the free play of free intellects, working on subjects of their own choice,” Bush wrote, “in the manner dictated by their curiosity for exploration of the unknown.” ([Location 4255](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=4255))
* At its core, all hyperspecialization is a well-meaning drive for efficiency—the most efficient way to develop a sports skill, assemble a product, learn to play an instrument, or work on a new technology. But inefficiency needs cultivating too. The wisdom of a Polgar-like method of laser-focused, efficient development is limited to narrowly constructed, kind learning environments. ([Location 4268](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=4268))
* “When you push the boundaries, a lot of it is just probing. It has to be inefficient,” Casadevall told me. “What’s gone totally is that time to talk and synthesize. People grab lunch and bring it into their offices. They feel lunch is inefficient, but often that’s the best time to bounce ideas and make connections.” ([Location 4270](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=4270))
* Experimentation is not a tidy prescription, but it is common, and it has advantages, and it requires more than the typical motivational-poster lip service to a tolerance for failure. Breakthroughs are high variance. ([Location 4287](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=4287))
* It’s like the stock market that way; if you want the sky highs, you have to tolerate a lot of lows. As InnoCentive founder Alph Bingham told me, “breakthrough and fallacy look a lot alike initially.” ([Location 4306](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=4306))
* So, about that one sentence of advice: Don’t feel behind. ([Location 4318](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H1ZYWTM&location=4318))