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 The
Logic of Failure Why do trains
crash when the signals are working? Why does a nuclear reactor melt down
with all operators alert at their posts? Why do so many of our best laid
professional and personal plans so often go awry?Paperback! Dietrich Dörner, winner of Germany's highest science prize, considers why -- given all our intelligence, experience, and information -- we make mistakes, sometimes with catastrophic consequences. Surprisingly, he finds the answer not in negligence or carelessness, but in what he calls "the logic of failure": certain tendencies in out patterns of thought -- such as taking one thing at a time, cause and effect, and linear thinking-that, while appropriate in an older, simpler world, prove disastrous for the complex world we live in now. Dörner finds no lack of examples. Why did the Aswan Dam
planners who brought the blessings of cheap electricity to Egypt not realize that they
would also interrupt the annual floods that for millennia had kept the Nile Valley rich
and fertile? Why do planners of Third World health programs not realize that increased
life expectancy requires increased food and thereby inadvertently end up contributing to
starvation? Working with intriguing computer simulations of his own invention, Dörner
exposes the flaws in our thinking. His examples -- sometimes hilarious, sometimes
horrifying -- and brain-teasing thought experiments teach us how to solve complex
problems. Together they make The Logic of Failure a corrective
tool, a guideline for intelligent planning and decision making. |
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