Aleksa's Book Review: Everything is Obvious

Pray hark, delightful patron of the Aleksa brand! As some of my partisans well know, I take great umbrage with the concept of "complexity science" and similar superstition with no predictive merit. However, when it is presented in a potable and applicable way as this book presents it, even terms such as complexity can be useful to even the most hands-on project.

This book describes in no small amount the examples by which interdependence in systems can work, and often to one's advantage. A notable example is the following: Despite having practically no genetic, language, cultural or other differences, the organ donor rate in Germany is 99.2% whereas the Austrian one is around 2%. What causes the discrepancy?

Read the book to find out, but it certainly hammers home the point of "Everything is obvious once you know the answer." The book made me challenge my own assumptions about the value of a principled and structured approach to problems, and instead led me to think about solving issues in a case-by-case basis - as much as I dislike the necessity of such thinking.

I recommend reading this as a tool to question one's way of thinking, akin to Dr. De Bono's book on water logic and the "Thinking Hats". Thinking is a tool that will be only increasingly important in the coming decades, and this work is a decent tool to improve it.
8/10