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kraxis's review against another edition
3.0
First three chapters were excellent and covered mapping, predicting and deciding. It gave an excellent introduction and overview but the last two chapters were weak and felt like an addendum that would have worked better as asides within the main three chapters.
The last two chapters covered the importance of reading narrative fiction to expand your spectrum of perspectives and the importance of daydreaming in analyzing potential future outcomes of various courses of actions and decisions.
The last two chapters covered the importance of reading narrative fiction to expand your spectrum of perspectives and the importance of daydreaming in analyzing potential future outcomes of various courses of actions and decisions.
artur02's review
2.0
The first half of the book is fascinating, still a bit slow. The stories are interesting and educating. The message is clear.
The second part of the book is for literature majors. Slow and expects you knowing one or two classic books from English literature.
The second part of the book is for literature majors. Slow and expects you knowing one or two classic books from English literature.
balletbookworm's review
3.0
As a fan of Steven Johnson’s, I was really interested to see him take on neuroscience and decision making analysis. And, well, this is fine. He’s packed a lot of information into the book, with several major examples he returns to as a way of explaining concepts (the capture of bin Laden, Washington’s loss in Brooklyn, Darwin’s decision to marry, etc). However, this just didn’t gel as a compulsively readable work of narrative science reporting. He got there at times - the final chapter has an analysis of Dorothea’s decision-making in Middlemarch - but it just wasn’t as fun to read.
jwsg's review
2.0
This is the third book by Steven Johnson that I've read - the first two being Everything Bad is Good for You and Where Good Ideas Come From - and I'm beginning to see certain common threads in his books.
#1: His books can be rather repetitive. He has one main idea and he flogs it to death.
In Farsighted, Johnson tackles the topic of decision-making. How might we make better decisions, where the full implications are not necessarily immediately obvious? Johnson outlines some of the tools and approaches that make for more robust decision-making - the use of full spectrum analysis for complex decisions, where decision-makers use influence diagrams to map out the possible chains of effect (much like mapping out not only first order, but also second and third order impacts); the use of charrettes and other platforms to allow diverse views to surface; embracing uncertainty and acknowledging the blind spots, "known unknowns" and "unknown unknowns"; deliberately exploring new alternatives rather than going with the original framing of the decision; pre-mortems and red-teaming to uncover alternative narratives and unsound assumptions; generating a Bad Events Table to make visible the downsides of a decision. Basically, he's saying that complex decisions are hard and we should aim for divergent processes at the start, rather than try to converge prematurely on a particular option.
#2: His thesis is based on a selective set of anecdotes and isn't entirely convincing.
This observation doesn't really apply in Farsighted because there isn't a thesis per se that Johnson has to make an argument for. His point in Farsighted is that complex decisions are hard and here are some ways to help improve the decision-making process. But, he does keep returning to a handful of examples to illustrate his points on how decision-making techniques have evolved over the years. The filling in of NYC's Collect Pond in the early 1800s is an example of poor and short-sighted decision making. Darwin's weighing of the pros and cons of getting married is an example of an attempt at rigorous (but ultimately unsophisticated) decision-making. The CIA's efforts to determine whether a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan really housed Osama bin Laden and if so, how they might respond, is an example of rigorous decision-making at its finest. These are the real life examples. But Johnson also dips into literary works to illustrate the complexities of decision-making, most notably George Eliot's Middlemarch, where he spends many, many pages unpacking the dilemmas faced by Tertius Lydgate and Dorothea Brooke.
#3: Johnson can get away with these flaws because he's an engaging writer. But it doesn't quite work in this instance.
Johnson's account of the CIA's efforts to hunt down Bin Laden is fascinating. And like his previous books, his writing is punchy. But there were several points when I thought Johnson was trying to wring out what little substance he could from the material he had collected. There were several points when I felt I was reading an essay for a college English class, when Johnson detailed Lydgate's and Brooke's dilemmas, rather than a book on decision-making. Saying that "[i]f you are interested in exploring the full spectrum complexity of a decision - from the inner life of the participants all the way out to the realm of gossip or technological change - no artistic form has ever rivalled the depth and breadth of novels like Middlemarch...In a way, you can think of the novel itself as a kind of technology. Like most technologies, it builds on and enhances existing skills that human being possess. Novels...are an amplified version of the default network's instinctual storytelling...that let us see farther and deeper." Nice try but seriously?? Johnson even unpacks his process when deciding whether to move from New York to California. The inclusion of this personal example might be perfectly valid in most cases but coming after the ENG 201 excerpts, it reads like an attempt to bulk up the book.
I'm writing this review having just started on Gary Klein's Streetlights and Shadows, which also deals with decision-making. My prelim sense? Go with Klein's work (Sources of Power is another great read) if you really want a tightly written and robustly constructed book on decision-making. Or the source materials Johnson referred to, like Kahneman's Thinking Fast and Slow. Read Johnson's Farsighted for the stories but not if you're hoping for any insight.
#1: His books can be rather repetitive. He has one main idea and he flogs it to death.
In Farsighted, Johnson tackles the topic of decision-making. How might we make better decisions, where the full implications are not necessarily immediately obvious? Johnson outlines some of the tools and approaches that make for more robust decision-making - the use of full spectrum analysis for complex decisions, where decision-makers use influence diagrams to map out the possible chains of effect (much like mapping out not only first order, but also second and third order impacts); the use of charrettes and other platforms to allow diverse views to surface; embracing uncertainty and acknowledging the blind spots, "known unknowns" and "unknown unknowns"; deliberately exploring new alternatives rather than going with the original framing of the decision; pre-mortems and red-teaming to uncover alternative narratives and unsound assumptions; generating a Bad Events Table to make visible the downsides of a decision. Basically, he's saying that complex decisions are hard and we should aim for divergent processes at the start, rather than try to converge prematurely on a particular option.
#2: His thesis is based on a selective set of anecdotes and isn't entirely convincing.
This observation doesn't really apply in Farsighted because there isn't a thesis per se that Johnson has to make an argument for. His point in Farsighted is that complex decisions are hard and here are some ways to help improve the decision-making process. But, he does keep returning to a handful of examples to illustrate his points on how decision-making techniques have evolved over the years. The filling in of NYC's Collect Pond in the early 1800s is an example of poor and short-sighted decision making. Darwin's weighing of the pros and cons of getting married is an example of an attempt at rigorous (but ultimately unsophisticated) decision-making. The CIA's efforts to determine whether a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan really housed Osama bin Laden and if so, how they might respond, is an example of rigorous decision-making at its finest. These are the real life examples. But Johnson also dips into literary works to illustrate the complexities of decision-making, most notably George Eliot's Middlemarch, where he spends many, many pages unpacking the dilemmas faced by Tertius Lydgate and Dorothea Brooke.
#3: Johnson can get away with these flaws because he's an engaging writer. But it doesn't quite work in this instance.
Johnson's account of the CIA's efforts to hunt down Bin Laden is fascinating. And like his previous books, his writing is punchy. But there were several points when I thought Johnson was trying to wring out what little substance he could from the material he had collected. There were several points when I felt I was reading an essay for a college English class, when Johnson detailed Lydgate's and Brooke's dilemmas, rather than a book on decision-making. Saying that "[i]f you are interested in exploring the full spectrum complexity of a decision - from the inner life of the participants all the way out to the realm of gossip or technological change - no artistic form has ever rivalled the depth and breadth of novels like Middlemarch...In a way, you can think of the novel itself as a kind of technology. Like most technologies, it builds on and enhances existing skills that human being possess. Novels...are an amplified version of the default network's instinctual storytelling...that let us see farther and deeper." Nice try but seriously?? Johnson even unpacks his process when deciding whether to move from New York to California. The inclusion of this personal example might be perfectly valid in most cases but coming after the ENG 201 excerpts, it reads like an attempt to bulk up the book.
I'm writing this review having just started on Gary Klein's Streetlights and Shadows, which also deals with decision-making. My prelim sense? Go with Klein's work (Sources of Power is another great read) if you really want a tightly written and robustly constructed book on decision-making. Or the source materials Johnson referred to, like Kahneman's Thinking Fast and Slow. Read Johnson's Farsighted for the stories but not if you're hoping for any insight.
cdeck's review
3.0
Great first half of the book digging into how one should map a decision and expand perspective. Falls apart in the latter half on how to make decisions once you’ve mapped it out. Overall, interesting book and great ideas on gaining diverse perspectives prior to making decisions.
liberrydude's review
3.0
Johnson delves into decision making on all levels from personal to national. He discusses military, environmental, personal, and even interplanetary decisions that we might not be farsighted enough to see their consequences. Some of these are: George Washington’s decision at the Battle of Brooklyn Heights; Obama’s decision on Osama bin Laden; NYC decision on Collect Pond and making a park from an abandoned overhead rail line; Darwin’s decision to marry; author’s decision to relocate to the West Coast; and even decisions in literature.
What all these decisions have in common are a framework of mapping, predicting or simulating, and then deciding. Some take a long deliberate process with LVM (linear value modeling) and take months or years. Others are made much quicker using an abbreviated pro and con list either written down or processed internally by our brains- our moral algebra.
It’s all very interesting but it does bog down at times. As a practitioner of the Marine Corps Planning Process I was surprised he didn’t delve into this very useful tool. His proofreaders missed an “egregious” minor error calling Admiral McRaven a general. I found the back third of the book much more interesting as he contemplated decisions for the greater good and personal decisions. Who gets to decide? Messaging extra terrestrials, immortality, and enabling artificial intelligence to surpass human comprehension and control are the big three. Also I had never thought of literary fiction as being a tool for enabling decisions. It’s all one big simulation according to Johnson. That was a fresh and stimulating observation that now has me wanting to read Middlemarch by George Eliot.
What all these decisions have in common are a framework of mapping, predicting or simulating, and then deciding. Some take a long deliberate process with LVM (linear value modeling) and take months or years. Others are made much quicker using an abbreviated pro and con list either written down or processed internally by our brains- our moral algebra.
It’s all very interesting but it does bog down at times. As a practitioner of the Marine Corps Planning Process I was surprised he didn’t delve into this very useful tool. His proofreaders missed an “egregious” minor error calling Admiral McRaven a general. I found the back third of the book much more interesting as he contemplated decisions for the greater good and personal decisions. Who gets to decide? Messaging extra terrestrials, immortality, and enabling artificial intelligence to surpass human comprehension and control are the big three. Also I had never thought of literary fiction as being a tool for enabling decisions. It’s all one big simulation according to Johnson. That was a fresh and stimulating observation that now has me wanting to read Middlemarch by George Eliot.
asdhleydg83's review
3.0
An interesting book around how decisions are made both personally and globally.
soonertbone's review
4.0
Pretty well done, and helpful to me as I struggle with my own indecisiveness around long-term decisions. Loses the thread a bit at the end, although I appreciate the humanistic approach he outlined.
nanometers's review
mysterious
medium-paced
2.25
This was a slog. I believe I heard him speak in a podcast where it was singularly focused but the book attempts to weave a weird collection of decisions and a failure to see future outcomes in times where this wasn't laid out. Then, with what is shared, the personal move is laid out with zero mention of the diversity of thought he states importance not many pages before.
If you haven't read in this space of decisions, cases and scenario planning, I hope you seek a different guide. If you have, then this is one to skip, unless you have an affinity for Darwin or bin Laden's raid.
I couldn't get behind some of the jumps made - humans are as poor at exponentials and percentages as we are at forecasting.
If you haven't read in this space of decisions, cases and scenario planning, I hope you seek a different guide. If you have, then this is one to skip, unless you have an affinity for Darwin or bin Laden's raid.
I couldn't get behind some of the jumps made - humans are as poor at exponentials and percentages as we are at forecasting.