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A review by clairealex
Fluke: Chance, Chaos, and Why Everything We Do Matters by Brian Klaas
3.0
The anecdotes of the effect of small changes were entertaining, though the main point became repetitious. At times it seemed more "another example of same" than a new aspect of the thesis. Then Chapter 12 was a bomb. Suddenly we are not talking about chaos and chance and small changes with big effects but about determinism v. free will. And the introduction to the chapter indicated that the hiding of the topic was on purpose. It was a clear discussion but no more convincing than any other I've read on the subject. And I think unjustly hidden.
Throughout the book Klaas talks of shocks when chance creates the unexpected. I couldn't help keeping his book in dialogue with Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine. In her book some shocks just happen (weather events) but others are created (coups). Both kinds are manipulated by governments to accomplish something they would not have been able to get done otherwise. The shock is exploited. But the word "exploited" is used differently in Fluke. Klaas contrasts exploration that is open ended with exploitation that is goal driven, a real taming of the term. He goes on to fault grant donors who select the goal driven over the exploration with no immediately obvious use, noting how often it if the latter that is needed.
Much of the book is driected at an audience of economic theorists and other social scientists who are locked into a closed universe view that pays hyper-attention to statistics and empirical research, Klaas arguing that it is the outliers that are important, outliers that the empirical approach discards. That is an argument humanists have been making for years. Perhaps the value here is an attempt by an insider to make the same point in a way it can be heard. Once I realized I was not the audience for the book, my resistance lessened; however, I still wonder to what extent the rigid scientists are a "straw man" argument.
Throughout the book Klaas talks of shocks when chance creates the unexpected. I couldn't help keeping his book in dialogue with Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine. In her book some shocks just happen (weather events) but others are created (coups). Both kinds are manipulated by governments to accomplish something they would not have been able to get done otherwise. The shock is exploited. But the word "exploited" is used differently in Fluke. Klaas contrasts exploration that is open ended with exploitation that is goal driven, a real taming of the term. He goes on to fault grant donors who select the goal driven over the exploration with no immediately obvious use, noting how often it if the latter that is needed.
Much of the book is driected at an audience of economic theorists and other social scientists who are locked into a closed universe view that pays hyper-attention to statistics and empirical research, Klaas arguing that it is the outliers that are important, outliers that the empirical approach discards. That is an argument humanists have been making for years. Perhaps the value here is an attempt by an insider to make the same point in a way it can be heard. Once I realized I was not the audience for the book, my resistance lessened; however, I still wonder to what extent the rigid scientists are a "straw man" argument.