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Sức Mạnh Của Sự Mơ Hồ Và Bí Ẩn
“MỘT CÁI NHÌN SÂU SẮC, SOI THẤU KHÍA CẠNH ĐẦY NGẠC NHIÊN CỦA SỰ MƠ HỒ VÀ BÍ ẨN. MỘT CUỐN SÁCH CÓ THỂ TRUYỀN CẢM HỨNG CHO VIỆC HỌC TẬP, SÁNG TẠO VÀ THẬM CHÍ LÀ CẢ SỰ ĐỒNG CẢM.”
Như Jamie Holmes chỉ ra trong cuốn sách này, sự mơ hồ và bí ẩn, sự nhập nhằng,… khiến chúng ta không thoải mái, do đó chúng ta có xu hướng trốn tránh nó và thường bám riết lấy phương án giải quyết an toàn (nhưng không phải lúc nào cũng là tốt nhất), đặc biệt là trong những tình huống nguy hiểm. Nhưng cũng chính vì thế, chúng ta tước đi của chính mình cơ hội quan trọng để tìm hiểu cách giải quyết vấn đề theo hướng mới hoặc quan sát thế giới từ một góc độ khác.
Bằng những hiểu biết về tâm lý học xã hội và khoa học nhận thức của tác giả và thông qua những câu chuyện thú vị - từ trò chơi gián điệp và các giáo phái ngày tận thế cho chiến dịch quảng cáo của Absolut Vodka hay sự sáng tạo của Mad Libs – cuốn sách của Jamie Holmes hứa hẹn sẽ làm thay đổi cách chúng ta tiến hành kinh doanh, giáo dục và đưa ra quyết định. Mọi khía cạnh tích cực của “sự mơ hồ và bí ẩn” và cách tận dụng nó đều nằm trong cuốn sách này!
Như Jamie Holmes chỉ ra trong cuốn sách này, sự mơ hồ và bí ẩn, sự nhập nhằng,… khiến chúng ta không thoải mái, do đó chúng ta có xu hướng trốn tránh nó và thường bám riết lấy phương án giải quyết an toàn (nhưng không phải lúc nào cũng là tốt nhất), đặc biệt là trong những tình huống nguy hiểm. Nhưng cũng chính vì thế, chúng ta tước đi của chính mình cơ hội quan trọng để tìm hiểu cách giải quyết vấn đề theo hướng mới hoặc quan sát thế giới từ một góc độ khác.
Bằng những hiểu biết về tâm lý học xã hội và khoa học nhận thức của tác giả và thông qua những câu chuyện thú vị - từ trò chơi gián điệp và các giáo phái ngày tận thế cho chiến dịch quảng cáo của Absolut Vodka hay sự sáng tạo của Mad Libs – cuốn sách của Jamie Holmes hứa hẹn sẽ làm thay đổi cách chúng ta tiến hành kinh doanh, giáo dục và đưa ra quyết định. Mọi khía cạnh tích cực của “sự mơ hồ và bí ẩn” và cách tận dụng nó đều nằm trong cuốn sách này!
367 pages, Paperback
First published April 21, 2015
211 people are currently reading
3714 people want to read
About the author
Jamie Holmes
7 books35 followersJamie Holmes is a writer and the author of the books The Free and the Dead, Nonsense, and 12 Seconds of Silence. His work has appeared in print or online in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Slate, WIRED, The Atlantic, and USA TODAY, among other publications. He holds an MIA from Columbia University’s School of International Affairs. Previously, he worked at New America as a policy analyst in international development and served as a Future Tense Fellow. Prior to that he was a research coordinator at Harvard’s Department of Economics, where he focused on behavioral economics.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 168 reviews
October 13, 2015
Holmes' Nonsense should be titled Ambiguity, or perhaps Uncertainty, and I can only guess that those titles do not poll as well, since the word "nonsense" is used only in the introduction and never again, whereas ambiguity and uncertainty dominate the text. That might seem a trivial distinction, but it's actually pretty important to me. Nonsense is information of little value -- data without meaning. Ambiguity is data with meaning but without a clear conclusion. And it is ambiguity that Holmes' really tackles, with sparkling results.
About 2/3 of the way through the book, Holmes provided a moment of clarity on the structure of the book, which I appreciate and I'm going to quote it here:
"We've looked at the dangers of a high need for closure, whether spurred on by trauma or unrelated anxiety, a high-stakes negotiation, inconclusive medical results, or a changing business environment. In Part 2, we focused on avoiding mistakes under pressure -- those situations in which we're forced to react to ambiguity -- and often feel compelled to avoid uncertainty. Part 3 will spotlight moments where uncertainty can be useful. Rather than explore how to minimize the harm that can come from dismissing ambiguity, we're going to look at how to maximize the benefits of harnessing ambiguity."
That would make an excellent back-of-the book blurb, but perhaps, again, it wouldn't poll well. But it definitely works for me. This book is full of anecdotes that support bigger points, and so is in the style of Gladwell and other pop-psychology books, but I actually think it's better written (I like Gladwell -- he's just a little too repetitive for me). Holmes has many stories to make his points, but he acknowledges the nuance in each one, which allows him to advance and evolve his argument, rather than just saying the same thing over and over. And since he's writing about the importance of nuance and shades of grey (no, not those shades of grey... just living in a world that isn't black and white), that's a fantastic and effective approach.
I felt the last part, in which he focuses on the benefits of recognizing and using ambiguity, was the most intriguing. He focused on people who, for various reasons, grow up dealing with different worldviews held simultaneously. These people are healthier mentally and more creative in general. He makes a good argument for multiculturalism from the brain's point of view. It's very convincing.
The first two parts work together to warn us about how desperately our brains want to avoid ambiguity and the mistakes we feel pressured to make in the face of uncertainty. While he focuses on anecdotes outside the world of politics, the applications to our current political culture are clear and pressing. Hopefully as this book spreads through the market, we can get shaken out of our internet-accommodated tribalism and recognize good arguments on both sides of the political divide, which make working together seem like a good idea rather than traitorous. Here's hoping.
I got a free copy of this book through the First to Read program.
About 2/3 of the way through the book, Holmes provided a moment of clarity on the structure of the book, which I appreciate and I'm going to quote it here:
"We've looked at the dangers of a high need for closure, whether spurred on by trauma or unrelated anxiety, a high-stakes negotiation, inconclusive medical results, or a changing business environment. In Part 2, we focused on avoiding mistakes under pressure -- those situations in which we're forced to react to ambiguity -- and often feel compelled to avoid uncertainty. Part 3 will spotlight moments where uncertainty can be useful. Rather than explore how to minimize the harm that can come from dismissing ambiguity, we're going to look at how to maximize the benefits of harnessing ambiguity."
That would make an excellent back-of-the book blurb, but perhaps, again, it wouldn't poll well. But it definitely works for me. This book is full of anecdotes that support bigger points, and so is in the style of Gladwell and other pop-psychology books, but I actually think it's better written (I like Gladwell -- he's just a little too repetitive for me). Holmes has many stories to make his points, but he acknowledges the nuance in each one, which allows him to advance and evolve his argument, rather than just saying the same thing over and over. And since he's writing about the importance of nuance and shades of grey (no, not those shades of grey... just living in a world that isn't black and white), that's a fantastic and effective approach.
I felt the last part, in which he focuses on the benefits of recognizing and using ambiguity, was the most intriguing. He focused on people who, for various reasons, grow up dealing with different worldviews held simultaneously. These people are healthier mentally and more creative in general. He makes a good argument for multiculturalism from the brain's point of view. It's very convincing.
The first two parts work together to warn us about how desperately our brains want to avoid ambiguity and the mistakes we feel pressured to make in the face of uncertainty. While he focuses on anecdotes outside the world of politics, the applications to our current political culture are clear and pressing. Hopefully as this book spreads through the market, we can get shaken out of our internet-accommodated tribalism and recognize good arguments on both sides of the political divide, which make working together seem like a good idea rather than traitorous. Here's hoping.
I got a free copy of this book through the First to Read program.
October 7, 2015
Nonsense: The Power of Not Knowing by Jamie Holmes is a review of literature dealing with the topic of ambiguity – how and why we avoid it, what happens when we do, and why it's important to embrace it. The premise of the book is clear. However, the structure of the book is more focused on diverse examples rather than its overall paradigm.
Read my complete review at: http://www.memoriesfrombooks.com/2015...
Reviewed for the Penguin First to Read program
Read my complete review at: http://www.memoriesfrombooks.com/2015...
Reviewed for the Penguin First to Read program
November 4, 2015
From start to finish, Nonsense: The Power of Not Knowing is a highly readable, engrossing book that explains how important it is to be able to deal with ambiguity, and not to be always seeking closure. Author Jamie Holmes points out early in the book that successfully dealing with ambiguity and uncertainty does not require a high IQ, but requires that one learns to master the emotional challenge of figuring out what to do when one has no idea what to do. He states that he hopes to convince the reader of "a simple claim": "In an increasingly complex, unpredictable world, what matters most isn't IQ, willpower, or confidence in what we know. It's how we deal with what we don't understand."
Those who don't or won't master that ambiguity challenge are more likely to "jump to conclusions", "deny contradictions", be mentally rigid, be prejudice and "revert to stereotypes", assert control elsewhere when losing control somewhere, be less creative, be more confident about an erroneous course of action, and be trusting of those who don't deserve trust and not trusting of those who do. There are also three things that tend to make individuals less likely to successfully deal with uncertainty and, thus, need a quick closure--fatigue, urgency and stress. States Mr. Holmes: "We have to reduce the messy world to manage it. But resolving something--fitting it into a metal box--also means that you stop scrutinizing it. Recognition means closure, and it marks the end of thinking, looking, and listening."
Embracing uncertainty, on the other hand, helps creativity and invention, deepens empathy, improves your "odds of making rational decisions", makes you less likely to fixate or clutch to "one aspect of a complex and shifting reality", and opens you to outside influences and traveling . . . which in turn feeds creativity and invention. As the author quoted Jerome Bruner: Creativity often results "when the ambiguity wins". Even mind traveling in books can be a big help, according to Mr. Holmes. He says: "And it's why reading fiction--which puts us in other people's shoes--can both lower our need for closure and make us more empathetic." (Interestingly, in novels, I prefer stories with closures, not stories where it appears the author simply stopped writing in order to end the story.)
On page 87 of Nonsense: The Power of Not Knowing is a "closure test" that the reader can take. But don't imagine this book is a self-help one, because it's not. It's more a book for those who like to think. The author provides many interesting stories, too, to help the reader visualize both successful and unsuccessful attempts to deal with ambiguity. Those stories include ones on: A doomsday group in the 1950s; the incredible increase in marriages after the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco; the 1992 Ruby Ridge standoff; the 1993 Waco standoff; the 1973 Yom Kippur War; and the fallacy of more and more medical testing because "the culture of medicine has little tolerance for ambiguity and uncertainty".
In addition, there are stories about: The use of brain scans in criminal cases; the failure of the midi-skirt to replace the mini-skirt in the early 1970s; how ambiguity aversion leads to higher insurance premiums; Toyota; the Zara fashion store in New York; Alexander Graham Bell; the Hand To Hand school in Jerusalem; bilinguals; Anton Chekhov; puzzles ("The act of puzzling is a protest against the mind's reduction of ambiguity."); and how in the business world "strategies with the greatest possibility of success also have the greatest possibility of failure". (While reading that part of the book, I thought it was a shame Mr. Holmes did not look at Paul Reichmann and the Canary Wharf project--The Reichmanns: Family, Faith, Fortune, and the Empire of Olympia & York. In fact, Paul Reichmann's entire career as a builder would have been most interesting to explore in this book; since it is believed that the reason he took on so many projects with so many uncertainties was because, for him, there were no uncertainties where his religious beliefs were concerned.)
When I reached the epilogue of the book, I was surprised. One, because there were so many pages left. It turns out the book has approximately 75 pages of notes. Two, because it didn't feel like the book was concluding. But I guess that is appropriate for a book that is proposing it is not good to constantly seek certainties and closures. Nonsense: The Power of Not Knowing actually reminds me in some ways of Kevin Ashton's How to Fly a Horse: The Secret History of Creation, Invention, and Discovery. Both books were about creativity, both books made me think quite a bit, and both books used up a lot of my supplies in my Post-It Study Kit. ( Kevin Ashton, though, sounded more like Thomas Edison, from Mr. Holmes' description, than Alexander Graham Bell. :) I also felt the great need to quote both authors in the reviews of their books. Hence, let me end this review with two quotes that I liked from Jamie Holmes: "The heroes of this book are all protesters, and they are protesting the premature destruction of the world's mystery." And: "Owning our own uncertainty makes us kinder, more creative, and more alive."
(Note: I received a free copy of this book from Amazon Vine in exchange for an honest review.)
Those who don't or won't master that ambiguity challenge are more likely to "jump to conclusions", "deny contradictions", be mentally rigid, be prejudice and "revert to stereotypes", assert control elsewhere when losing control somewhere, be less creative, be more confident about an erroneous course of action, and be trusting of those who don't deserve trust and not trusting of those who do. There are also three things that tend to make individuals less likely to successfully deal with uncertainty and, thus, need a quick closure--fatigue, urgency and stress. States Mr. Holmes: "We have to reduce the messy world to manage it. But resolving something--fitting it into a metal box--also means that you stop scrutinizing it. Recognition means closure, and it marks the end of thinking, looking, and listening."
Embracing uncertainty, on the other hand, helps creativity and invention, deepens empathy, improves your "odds of making rational decisions", makes you less likely to fixate or clutch to "one aspect of a complex and shifting reality", and opens you to outside influences and traveling . . . which in turn feeds creativity and invention. As the author quoted Jerome Bruner: Creativity often results "when the ambiguity wins". Even mind traveling in books can be a big help, according to Mr. Holmes. He says: "And it's why reading fiction--which puts us in other people's shoes--can both lower our need for closure and make us more empathetic." (Interestingly, in novels, I prefer stories with closures, not stories where it appears the author simply stopped writing in order to end the story.)
On page 87 of Nonsense: The Power of Not Knowing is a "closure test" that the reader can take. But don't imagine this book is a self-help one, because it's not. It's more a book for those who like to think. The author provides many interesting stories, too, to help the reader visualize both successful and unsuccessful attempts to deal with ambiguity. Those stories include ones on: A doomsday group in the 1950s; the incredible increase in marriages after the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco; the 1992 Ruby Ridge standoff; the 1993 Waco standoff; the 1973 Yom Kippur War; and the fallacy of more and more medical testing because "the culture of medicine has little tolerance for ambiguity and uncertainty".
In addition, there are stories about: The use of brain scans in criminal cases; the failure of the midi-skirt to replace the mini-skirt in the early 1970s; how ambiguity aversion leads to higher insurance premiums; Toyota; the Zara fashion store in New York; Alexander Graham Bell; the Hand To Hand school in Jerusalem; bilinguals; Anton Chekhov; puzzles ("The act of puzzling is a protest against the mind's reduction of ambiguity."); and how in the business world "strategies with the greatest possibility of success also have the greatest possibility of failure". (While reading that part of the book, I thought it was a shame Mr. Holmes did not look at Paul Reichmann and the Canary Wharf project--The Reichmanns: Family, Faith, Fortune, and the Empire of Olympia & York. In fact, Paul Reichmann's entire career as a builder would have been most interesting to explore in this book; since it is believed that the reason he took on so many projects with so many uncertainties was because, for him, there were no uncertainties where his religious beliefs were concerned.)
When I reached the epilogue of the book, I was surprised. One, because there were so many pages left. It turns out the book has approximately 75 pages of notes. Two, because it didn't feel like the book was concluding. But I guess that is appropriate for a book that is proposing it is not good to constantly seek certainties and closures. Nonsense: The Power of Not Knowing actually reminds me in some ways of Kevin Ashton's How to Fly a Horse: The Secret History of Creation, Invention, and Discovery. Both books were about creativity, both books made me think quite a bit, and both books used up a lot of my supplies in my Post-It Study Kit. ( Kevin Ashton, though, sounded more like Thomas Edison, from Mr. Holmes' description, than Alexander Graham Bell. :) I also felt the great need to quote both authors in the reviews of their books. Hence, let me end this review with two quotes that I liked from Jamie Holmes: "The heroes of this book are all protesters, and they are protesting the premature destruction of the world's mystery." And: "Owning our own uncertainty makes us kinder, more creative, and more alive."
(Note: I received a free copy of this book from Amazon Vine in exchange for an honest review.)
July 9, 2016
It started out amazing, i couldn't put it down. So much so that I told all my friends about this exciting new book I found and the captivating stories I had read so far. But then about a quarter to halfway through story after interesting story and then not so interesting stories... it became pointless and redundant. To be honest I couldn't even finish the last bit, it became so boring. He kept saying the same thing over and over and over... I swear he even told the same exact story twice. Or maybe i fell asleep and lost my spot and read it again. Idk. The only reason I gave it the extra star is because there are some great stories that you can take away and learn something from. BUT he fails to tie them into anything meaningful, like a point. The last quarter of his book are "notes", the longest end note section of a book I've ever seen. huh? Maybe that was his point, to make you uncertain as to why you read the book. Things that make you go hmmm...
November 7, 2015
This book brings together several different cognitive theories to help understand how different individuals deal with ambiguous information. While some individuals have a high need for context, others are more comfortable when new information doesn't neatly fit into their current understanding of the world. This is a great book for learning how to understand different points of view and how some individuals choose to interpret events differently from others.
Note I received a free ARC of this title from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
Note I received a free ARC of this title from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
October 18, 2015
After the destruction of hurricane Hugo caused 24 counties in South Carolina to be declared disaster areas, there was a sharp increase in both marriages and divorces among couples affected by the storm. Apparently the disruption of the disaster caused many couples to reappraise their uncertain romantic relationships and seek comfort in a new certainty.
This book explores the many important human effects of ambiguity. One thesis of the book is that after experiencing physiologically acute threats, humans crave decisiveness. “A subtle physical anxiety is in fact the engine motivating us to reestablish order after encountering disorder.” “We’re endlessly reducing ambiguity to certainty.” Another thesis is that embracing ambiguity can result in better, and often more creative outcomes. “Dwelling calmly among feelings of uncertainly…will help you make a more rational decision.”
The book relies on many diverse examples to develop its thesis. Anecdotes include stories about: learning languages, advertising, perceiving reverse colored playing cards, inventing Mad Libs, humor, pattern recognition, commitment to existing beliefs, cognitive dissonance, meaningful lives, aftermaths of natural disasters, decision making, cults, hostage negotiations, intelligence briefings, finding Osama bin Laden, medical testing and diagnosis, midi skirts, inventory planning, CEO tolerance for ambiguity, designing motorcycles, learning, creative writing, science, digital currency, innovation, jigsaw puzzles, art, stereotypes, problem solving, bilingualism, culture, prejudice, and creativity.
These many examples illustrate the general concepts the book explores, but are sometimes presented in a somewhat disjointed narrative structure. It is not always clear what point is being illustrated by each example.
Author Jamie Holmes makes it clear our response to ambiguity has important consequences. Grasping prematurely for closure can solidify our resolve to purse wrong action and leads to prejudice. “The roots of prejudice can be traced to a general cognitive outlook characterized by the hunger for certainty.” Fear can preempt our search for alternative solutions or explanations and propel us toward false certainty and false choices. “Feeling threatened is often all it takes to raise our desire for certainty.” “Just as the great artists or scientist are inspired by contradictions, the prejudiced person seeks to eradicate them.” The good news is that dwelling in complexity, ambiguity, and nuance can increase creativity and improve problem solving. Quoting Eric Fromm, “The capacity to be puzzled is indeed the premise of all creation, be it in art, or in science.” We can learn profound lessons from failure.
The book begins to present approaches we can use to increase our tolerance for ambiguity and harness ambiguity to increase our creativity, tolerance, and innovation. Examples include: “Thinking about prejudice as entrenched in a high need for closure might help us see the problem in a slightly different light.” “Culture is a…collective denial—of ambiguity.” “Eras of artistic creativity often follow periods of openness to outside influences.” “We can’t always resolve ambiguity by seeking out more information.” And “having a playful disrespect for norms…can be very valuable.”
This is the only book I am aware of dedicated to exploring the topic of ambiguity. The book highlights a topic that deserves more exploration, attention, and understanding.
This easy to read book makes a credible argument supported by 77 pages of endnotes as it introduces and explores an important topic.
This book explores the many important human effects of ambiguity. One thesis of the book is that after experiencing physiologically acute threats, humans crave decisiveness. “A subtle physical anxiety is in fact the engine motivating us to reestablish order after encountering disorder.” “We’re endlessly reducing ambiguity to certainty.” Another thesis is that embracing ambiguity can result in better, and often more creative outcomes. “Dwelling calmly among feelings of uncertainly…will help you make a more rational decision.”
The book relies on many diverse examples to develop its thesis. Anecdotes include stories about: learning languages, advertising, perceiving reverse colored playing cards, inventing Mad Libs, humor, pattern recognition, commitment to existing beliefs, cognitive dissonance, meaningful lives, aftermaths of natural disasters, decision making, cults, hostage negotiations, intelligence briefings, finding Osama bin Laden, medical testing and diagnosis, midi skirts, inventory planning, CEO tolerance for ambiguity, designing motorcycles, learning, creative writing, science, digital currency, innovation, jigsaw puzzles, art, stereotypes, problem solving, bilingualism, culture, prejudice, and creativity.
These many examples illustrate the general concepts the book explores, but are sometimes presented in a somewhat disjointed narrative structure. It is not always clear what point is being illustrated by each example.
Author Jamie Holmes makes it clear our response to ambiguity has important consequences. Grasping prematurely for closure can solidify our resolve to purse wrong action and leads to prejudice. “The roots of prejudice can be traced to a general cognitive outlook characterized by the hunger for certainty.” Fear can preempt our search for alternative solutions or explanations and propel us toward false certainty and false choices. “Feeling threatened is often all it takes to raise our desire for certainty.” “Just as the great artists or scientist are inspired by contradictions, the prejudiced person seeks to eradicate them.” The good news is that dwelling in complexity, ambiguity, and nuance can increase creativity and improve problem solving. Quoting Eric Fromm, “The capacity to be puzzled is indeed the premise of all creation, be it in art, or in science.” We can learn profound lessons from failure.
The book begins to present approaches we can use to increase our tolerance for ambiguity and harness ambiguity to increase our creativity, tolerance, and innovation. Examples include: “Thinking about prejudice as entrenched in a high need for closure might help us see the problem in a slightly different light.” “Culture is a…collective denial—of ambiguity.” “Eras of artistic creativity often follow periods of openness to outside influences.” “We can’t always resolve ambiguity by seeking out more information.” And “having a playful disrespect for norms…can be very valuable.”
This is the only book I am aware of dedicated to exploring the topic of ambiguity. The book highlights a topic that deserves more exploration, attention, and understanding.
This easy to read book makes a credible argument supported by 77 pages of endnotes as it introduces and explores an important topic.
August 26, 2015
I received this book through a Goodreads First Reads giveaway.
Nonsense is built on the relatively intuitive concept that humans are not, as a general rule, fantastic at dealing with ambiguity. As it goes with so many of our evolutionary specialties, our relationship with uncertainty has a tendency to enrich us while simultaneously tormenting us. On one hand, our ability to form patterns and filter out unnecessary information is a tremendous advantage in maximizing brain-space. On the other hand, our distaste for the unknown has the potential to make us inflexible, reactionary, and fearful. In Nonsense, Holmes challenges us to develop a healthier respect for those uncomfortable grey areas.
The word “rich” is appropriate to describe this book. Holmes does a phenomenal job of introducing layer after layer of approachable academic research and real-world case studies that illustrate the impact of ambiguity. By exploring the role of uncertainty in all sorts of unexpected places – a marketing campaign for Absolut vodka, the Branch Davidian debacle in Waco, a deck of playing cards with the power to reinforce our beliefs – Nonsense provides insight into our psychological response to ambiguity, how it holds us back, and how we can use it to our advantage.
Now that I have finished the book, I find it amusing how ambiguous our responses to ambiguity can be. I score above average on the “need-for-closure” test in the chapter about Waco, but I recognize that I’m pretty good at dealing with ambiguity in the context of process improvement described in the chapter on Ducati motorcycles. *chuckles*
Ultimately, whether you’re naturally adept, inept, or somewhere in between when it comes to navigating the unknown, this book will teach you something important about yourself. Nonsense is a highly satisfying and illuminating read that is easy to recommend.
Nonsense is built on the relatively intuitive concept that humans are not, as a general rule, fantastic at dealing with ambiguity. As it goes with so many of our evolutionary specialties, our relationship with uncertainty has a tendency to enrich us while simultaneously tormenting us. On one hand, our ability to form patterns and filter out unnecessary information is a tremendous advantage in maximizing brain-space. On the other hand, our distaste for the unknown has the potential to make us inflexible, reactionary, and fearful. In Nonsense, Holmes challenges us to develop a healthier respect for those uncomfortable grey areas.
The word “rich” is appropriate to describe this book. Holmes does a phenomenal job of introducing layer after layer of approachable academic research and real-world case studies that illustrate the impact of ambiguity. By exploring the role of uncertainty in all sorts of unexpected places – a marketing campaign for Absolut vodka, the Branch Davidian debacle in Waco, a deck of playing cards with the power to reinforce our beliefs – Nonsense provides insight into our psychological response to ambiguity, how it holds us back, and how we can use it to our advantage.
Now that I have finished the book, I find it amusing how ambiguous our responses to ambiguity can be. I score above average on the “need-for-closure” test in the chapter about Waco, but I recognize that I’m pretty good at dealing with ambiguity in the context of process improvement described in the chapter on Ducati motorcycles. *chuckles*
Ultimately, whether you’re naturally adept, inept, or somewhere in between when it comes to navigating the unknown, this book will teach you something important about yourself. Nonsense is a highly satisfying and illuminating read that is easy to recommend.
November 28, 2015
I got this as a Goodreads Giveaway and read it out loud with my husband. We both thought it was a very intriguing premise. It's core thesis is how we deal with ambiguity in our lives. It outlines how humans have a natural tendency for the most part to try to eliminate ambiguity as much as possible. To search for answers and not just answers but to remove doubt. Over the course of several chapters Mr. Holmes shows how individuals who are more comfortable with ambiguity and not made anxious by it are able to problem solve better and are more creative and ultimately it seems gain wisdom faster. The first chapter and the last were the most powerful I thought. The last one describes a school in Jerusalem that is composed 50/50 of Arab and Israeli children. These children learn each other's language and understand that they are unique and learning to navigate their divided universe in a different healthy way. The description of 7 year olds navigating the Arab and Israeli quarters together giving each other tips on when to speak which language to avoid conflict and attention is really astonishing. I have recommended this book to friends and family because it is so accessible and interesting. I will read it again too...something I rarely do. Not all parts are equally compelling but there is enough here to justify a reread. First and last chapters are musts though.
March 19, 2018
This book lives up to its name. Was Mr. Holmes playing a sly trick? Was Nonsense a metabook that purposely delivered information out of order, muddled its points, and seemed easily distracted from its hypothetical flow in order to force readers into an uncomfortable, challenging posture, so that they could wrestle meaning from these pages? Alternately, is this book a scissors-and-glue product of ambition, insufficient research, and really bad editing?
I suspect the latter, and also that I may have overestimated what Mr. Holmes meant to accomplish. After all, upon reflection, this book doesn't make bold promises. On pg 8 Mr. Holmes says that "[t]his book looks at how we make sense of the world. It's about what happens when we're confused and the path forward isn't obvious." Then, near the end of his introduction, he adds, "Along the way, I hope to convince you [that]...in an increasingly complex, unpredictable world, what matters most is....how we deal with what we don't understand" (pg 15).
For some reason I assumed that this book would investigate why we think and behave as we do in the face of "not knowing," and what we might do about it. Mr. Holmes gives up a little bit on these fronts, but he doesn't actually say he wants to dissect anything. He primarily reports the experiences of others, declaring strengths and weaknesses without much penetrative analysis.
The third section is most fruitful for anyone seeking to deal with ambiguity well or, put more accurately, for anyone who wants to know some methods to foster creativity. Of course, your ability to act on these observations may vary (it will probably be easier to pick up a second language than to become a world traveler).
For others, unless one is satisfied just by reading very long-winded, under-analyzed anecdotes, in order to learn how one might better process and respond to uncertainty one almost has to behave as if this book is one of the mind-altering experiments it writes about.
Whatever one's intentions are, whatever Mr. Holmes's intentions were, one might find, as I did, that the disarray results in more frustration than rewards.
Regarding structure:
In the many, overly detailed, overlapping, and not-always-related stories Mr. Holmes gives, I often felt like I was being distracted from the lack of overall substance. The point of any given chapter was often vague and disjointed. Trains of thought leapfrogged over digressions, backtracked to prior chapters, sped ahead to be picked up many pages after they seemed to have been forgotten. After a lot of hard work, I managed to cobble together some of the observations I think the book meant to share, but was disappointed that these were mostly declarative. This took me back to my 6th grade active reading class: reporting is well and good, but what about interrogating? Synthesizing?
To give credit where due, most chapters fulfill the threadbare promise of the book at large, in that they do name ways that our habits of thought simplify received complexity and uncertainty, or ways some people acknowledge and work with complexity, or ways people practice greater creativity. I gleaned some value from most chapters, but I almost feel that it was by accident. The seeming lack of any authorly ambition to challenge himself or the reader, to dig into questions or contradictions or even to substantiate the claims the book reports on, routinely disappointed me and made me want to skip past this book to the sources it quotes.
Regarding argumentation:
The limited, reporting-oriented scope of this book is perhaps a wise recognition of limited authority concerning the subject matter. Unfortunately, at moments the text oversteps this self-imposed boundary and waxes eloquent, to embarrassing effect, by not sufficiently supporting its claims, making confused points, or simply undermining its own credibility.
- Mr. Holmes unselfconsciously quotes the "Cambridge University Effect" on pg 27. This has been debunked.
- On pg 77, he states, "Uncertain times can be painful [but] they are also by definition eras of change." By definition? I do not believe this claim was ever backed up: it came across like false profundity.
- Pg 81 - "Dashing into war can be a total catastrophe, while rushing into marriage may or may not be a personal disaster. Ultimately, urgency can sometimes be a good thing...." (emphasis added) More false profundity, and a careless statement to make in a book that seeks to argue that oversimplifying is a weakness and urgency is what tempts us to oversimplify.
Generally, this book is very short on measures by which to judge the quality of our understanding and actions, and considering examples like those above, maybe that absence is a good thing.
Regarding the final section
The last third of the book is the most rewarding (although ironically I think it is less about uncertainty than about fostering creativity). For those like me who like something to think harder about after finishing, and even take action on, this section focuses on strategy rather than spectating. My only uncertainty is the book's bold move into the Israeli-Palestinian relationship.
Superficially a point is being made about bilingualism and biculturalism, and their positive impact on perspective and creativity, but the choice of scenario feels tone deaf at best. As I reflect on this I think back on the rest of the book: light-hearted psychology experiments juxtaposed with cults, motorcycle races alongside fatal confrontations between government and citizens, creativity ideas sharing page space with military actions and deeply-complex, deeply-meaningful cultural conflicts.
Has Nonsense earned the right to take on such weighty subjects? Part of me suspects that the (forgive me) nonsense about not knowing and ambiguity were just Mr. Holmes's excuse to talk about diversity. I happen to agree that modernity provides us with uncomfortable and necessary, scary and rewarding challenges to our small world mentalities, but if Mr. Holmes wanted to explore multiculturalism, compassion, patience, and sociopolitical openness, then maybe that is the book he should have written. If he has the relevant expertise, maybe it also would have been a better book.
Nonsense contains many interesting ideas, which I hope to follow up on through other sources. I wanted to like this book, there was much in it to like, but it felt so misshapen and clumsy. Perhaps that is exactly why I felt so frustrated then as I read it and now, as I write about it. I can live with that uncertainty - I don't feel it's worth the energy to reconcile it.
I suspect the latter, and also that I may have overestimated what Mr. Holmes meant to accomplish. After all, upon reflection, this book doesn't make bold promises. On pg 8 Mr. Holmes says that "[t]his book looks at how we make sense of the world. It's about what happens when we're confused and the path forward isn't obvious." Then, near the end of his introduction, he adds, "Along the way, I hope to convince you [that]...in an increasingly complex, unpredictable world, what matters most is....how we deal with what we don't understand" (pg 15).
For some reason I assumed that this book would investigate why we think and behave as we do in the face of "not knowing," and what we might do about it. Mr. Holmes gives up a little bit on these fronts, but he doesn't actually say he wants to dissect anything. He primarily reports the experiences of others, declaring strengths and weaknesses without much penetrative analysis.
The third section is most fruitful for anyone seeking to deal with ambiguity well or, put more accurately, for anyone who wants to know some methods to foster creativity. Of course, your ability to act on these observations may vary (it will probably be easier to pick up a second language than to become a world traveler).
For others, unless one is satisfied just by reading very long-winded, under-analyzed anecdotes, in order to learn how one might better process and respond to uncertainty one almost has to behave as if this book is one of the mind-altering experiments it writes about.
Whatever one's intentions are, whatever Mr. Holmes's intentions were, one might find, as I did, that the disarray results in more frustration than rewards.
Regarding structure:
In the many, overly detailed, overlapping, and not-always-related stories Mr. Holmes gives, I often felt like I was being distracted from the lack of overall substance. The point of any given chapter was often vague and disjointed. Trains of thought leapfrogged over digressions, backtracked to prior chapters, sped ahead to be picked up many pages after they seemed to have been forgotten. After a lot of hard work, I managed to cobble together some of the observations I think the book meant to share, but was disappointed that these were mostly declarative. This took me back to my 6th grade active reading class: reporting is well and good, but what about interrogating? Synthesizing?
To give credit where due, most chapters fulfill the threadbare promise of the book at large, in that they do name ways that our habits of thought simplify received complexity and uncertainty, or ways some people acknowledge and work with complexity, or ways people practice greater creativity. I gleaned some value from most chapters, but I almost feel that it was by accident. The seeming lack of any authorly ambition to challenge himself or the reader, to dig into questions or contradictions or even to substantiate the claims the book reports on, routinely disappointed me and made me want to skip past this book to the sources it quotes.
Regarding argumentation:
The limited, reporting-oriented scope of this book is perhaps a wise recognition of limited authority concerning the subject matter. Unfortunately, at moments the text oversteps this self-imposed boundary and waxes eloquent, to embarrassing effect, by not sufficiently supporting its claims, making confused points, or simply undermining its own credibility.
- Mr. Holmes unselfconsciously quotes the "Cambridge University Effect" on pg 27. This has been debunked.
- On pg 77, he states, "Uncertain times can be painful [but] they are also by definition eras of change." By definition? I do not believe this claim was ever backed up: it came across like false profundity.
- Pg 81 - "Dashing into war can be a total catastrophe, while rushing into marriage may or may not be a personal disaster. Ultimately, urgency can sometimes be a good thing...." (emphasis added) More false profundity, and a careless statement to make in a book that seeks to argue that oversimplifying is a weakness and urgency is what tempts us to oversimplify.
Generally, this book is very short on measures by which to judge the quality of our understanding and actions, and considering examples like those above, maybe that absence is a good thing.
Regarding the final section
The last third of the book is the most rewarding (although ironically I think it is less about uncertainty than about fostering creativity). For those like me who like something to think harder about after finishing, and even take action on, this section focuses on strategy rather than spectating. My only uncertainty is the book's bold move into the Israeli-Palestinian relationship.
Superficially a point is being made about bilingualism and biculturalism, and their positive impact on perspective and creativity, but the choice of scenario feels tone deaf at best. As I reflect on this I think back on the rest of the book: light-hearted psychology experiments juxtaposed with cults, motorcycle races alongside fatal confrontations between government and citizens, creativity ideas sharing page space with military actions and deeply-complex, deeply-meaningful cultural conflicts.
Has Nonsense earned the right to take on such weighty subjects? Part of me suspects that the (forgive me) nonsense about not knowing and ambiguity were just Mr. Holmes's excuse to talk about diversity. I happen to agree that modernity provides us with uncomfortable and necessary, scary and rewarding challenges to our small world mentalities, but if Mr. Holmes wanted to explore multiculturalism, compassion, patience, and sociopolitical openness, then maybe that is the book he should have written. If he has the relevant expertise, maybe it also would have been a better book.
Nonsense contains many interesting ideas, which I hope to follow up on through other sources. I wanted to like this book, there was much in it to like, but it felt so misshapen and clumsy. Perhaps that is exactly why I felt so frustrated then as I read it and now, as I write about it. I can live with that uncertainty - I don't feel it's worth the energy to reconcile it.
July 4, 2016
"You are not so singular in your suspicions that you know but little. The longer I live, the more I read, the more patiently I think, and the more anxiously I inquire, the less I seem to know. . . . Do justly. Love mercy. Walk humbly. This is enough."I have always loved the preceding John Adams quote, written in a letter to his granddaughter Caroline. I struggle with feeling that I know less as time goes on, especially when it seems that most everyone around me is so certain about everything! Nonsense: The Power of Not Knowing by Jamie Holmes appealed to me because of its premise: it is not about what you know, but how you handle what you don't know.
This book is surprisingly short! It ends on page 232 (72%) and the remainder of the pages are endnotes. Nonsense deals exclusively with the topics of ambiguity and uncertainty. It has a similar feel to books by Malcolm Gladwell (The Tipping Point), Dan Ariely (Predictably Irrational) and Steven Levitt/Stephen J. Dubner (Freakonomics), in that it uses case studies and experiments from a wide variety of fields to justify its thesis. Throughout the book, the author provides possible solutions to counteract our intrinsic need to avoid ambiguity.
Let's say for example, you see a white crow. At first you're a little surprised. You peer at the bird with heightened attention, and then eventually you switch into the more domineering mind state that making decisions requires. You can assimilate the experience and decide the bird is a dove. Or you can accommodate it and recognize that albino crows exist. The rub, as Proulx's collaborator Steve Heine told me, is that "assimilation is so often incomplete." We act as if we’re sure the bird is a dove, but the feeling that it’s not is still there in the unconscious, leaving us trapped in a similar middle ground as the doomsday believers were, stuck between assuming we’ve understood and sensing we haven’t. One way we respond to these lingering anxieties is by finding comfort in our social groups and passionately emphasizing our ideals. Proulx and Inzlicht called this reaction affirmation. Affirmation is the intensification of beliefs, whatever those beliefs might be, in response to a perceived threat.The book is divided three parts The first part is about how the human brain responds to uncertainty. This section was really interesting because of the experiments showing that humans automatically seek order after being exposed to randomness, even when they are not consciously aware of the exposure. Not only did the test subjects find patterns more effectively after seeing incorrectly colored playing cards, their political positions intensified.
When the world is less predictable, people are more likely to jump to conclusions or entrench their existing views. That’s the problem with striving for certainty or making rashly informed judgments of trust to escape from ambiguity. Urgently fixating on certainty is our defense mechanism against the unknown and unstable. However, what we need in turbulent times is adaptability and calculated reevaluation.Part 2 explores the hazards of denying ambiguity. The author uses the 1993 Waco Siege as an example of how confusing natural ambivalence with duplicity can end in avoidable tragedy. He also discussed how highly sensitive tests that doctors overutilize for quick closure may actually create bad and/or unnecessary outcomes for patients.
"Openness to outside influences and the frequency of travel abroad, he found, was correlated with simultaneous gains in achievements in business and religion. Most strikingly, he also discovered that the more diversity there was in Japanese society, the more creative the society was two generations later in the areas of medicine, fiction, poetry, and painting. Diversity can be painful initially, it seems, but it pays off decades later. While at first most immigrants occupy a marginal position in society, as Simonton explained, “after a generation or two not only do they become integrated but their culture becomes part of the ‘melting pot’—as we start eating pizza or chow mein."Part 3 highlights how embracing ambiguity can be asset. My main takeaways from this chapter were that it is important to investigate your successes as well as your failures and that deconstructing objects to their most form can lead to great ingenuity.
Nonsense is definitely relevant to today's world. The need to reconcile ambiguity is probably one of the driving forces behind the growing divisiveness in the United States, which seems to get more heightened as the 24-hour news cycle and the internet makes the world feel more chaotic. On a lighter note, it also might explain the intense emotions during the white/gold or blue/black dress debacle! Like any book of this nature, it is not a complete picture and it relies heavily on anecdotes. However, it does provide yet another lens with which to see the world and makes one much more comfortable with the concept of uncertainty. It made me view the contentious arguments that erupt on social media in a different light and has made me more reflective over my own knee-jerk reactions. It is a fun and quick read and I think it would be a useful book for everyone to read.
For Chekhov, morality lay not in our relationships with what we know, but how admirably we deal with what we don't…It’s a morality distinct from IQ and common notions of confidence or self-control. Chekhov showed that not knowing doesn’t leave us without a compass, in some relativist nether land. Owning our uncertainty makes us kinder, more creative, and more alive…"It is time for writers to admit that nothing in this world makes sense,” [Anton Chekhov] once wrote. “Only fools and charlatans think they know and understand everything . . . and if an artist decides to declare that he understands nothing of what he sees—this in itself constitutes a considerable clarity in the realm of thought, and a great step forward.”
I received this book from Penguin Random House in exchange for an honest review.
August 19, 2015
Nonsense was hyped as a book for those, like me, who like Malcolm Gladwell's writing so I was enticed. And it is like Gladwell's books in that Jamie Holmes includes a lot of examples that draw the reader in and allow us to understand through stories, the concept he is conveying.
For example, "we all have an innate ability to form impressions based on limited information… Our urge for resolution is vital both for managing complexity and for learning." Holmes uses examples to explain what he means; vodka doesn't have much taste or smell and as a result is hard to hype. Add to that it's from Sweden, not Russia. Absolut in 1979 was selling five thousand cases, after the ads ten years later, annual sales were at 2.5 million cases. Their ads with a touch of humor and a bit of a mystery to solve had turned sales around. Simple compelling ads featured the bottle as a person or a thing. "In 'Absolut Perfection,' the bottle was an angel (or a haloed rascal.) In 'Absolut Elegance,' the bottle was sporting a bow tie. 'Absolut Profile' showed the bottle turned ninety degrees to one side." Absolut advertisers treated the consumer as smart enough to figure out the riddle. And it worked. The viewer had a puzzle to solve using just two words and people were hooked.
Holmes explains that we can't be confused unless we have at least a little knowledge. When Bill Cosby did his show, Kids Say the Darndest Things, it worked because there was humor in seeing the child with a bit of knowledge able to make sense of the world by extrapolating his limited knowledge onto the bigger more mysterious world, right or wrong:
Cosby: "I have a cut. See it? What do you do for that?
Kemett: (without hesitation): You've got to put a little Neosporin on it. And then put a bandage over it. Then it'll go away.
Cosby: Where does it go?
Kemett: It go, um, it go… down here (he points to his finger)… in your blood.
Cosby: And where does it go?
Kemett: Then it'll go in another country.
Cosby: What country do you think mine is going to go to?
Kemett: Uh, China
This book is fascinating in its telling. There's also Ducati's humiliation which would eventually lead to the 2007 Grand Prix Championship title. Steve Jobs describes how prosperous companies can be ruined by their own success because the executives stop questioning, for example, why exactly a particular product was a huge hit and then their next product is a failure.
This is a readable enlightening book.
For example, "we all have an innate ability to form impressions based on limited information… Our urge for resolution is vital both for managing complexity and for learning." Holmes uses examples to explain what he means; vodka doesn't have much taste or smell and as a result is hard to hype. Add to that it's from Sweden, not Russia. Absolut in 1979 was selling five thousand cases, after the ads ten years later, annual sales were at 2.5 million cases. Their ads with a touch of humor and a bit of a mystery to solve had turned sales around. Simple compelling ads featured the bottle as a person or a thing. "In 'Absolut Perfection,' the bottle was an angel (or a haloed rascal.) In 'Absolut Elegance,' the bottle was sporting a bow tie. 'Absolut Profile' showed the bottle turned ninety degrees to one side." Absolut advertisers treated the consumer as smart enough to figure out the riddle. And it worked. The viewer had a puzzle to solve using just two words and people were hooked.
Holmes explains that we can't be confused unless we have at least a little knowledge. When Bill Cosby did his show, Kids Say the Darndest Things, it worked because there was humor in seeing the child with a bit of knowledge able to make sense of the world by extrapolating his limited knowledge onto the bigger more mysterious world, right or wrong:
Cosby: "I have a cut. See it? What do you do for that?
Kemett: (without hesitation): You've got to put a little Neosporin on it. And then put a bandage over it. Then it'll go away.
Cosby: Where does it go?
Kemett: It go, um, it go… down here (he points to his finger)… in your blood.
Cosby: And where does it go?
Kemett: Then it'll go in another country.
Cosby: What country do you think mine is going to go to?
Kemett: Uh, China
This book is fascinating in its telling. There's also Ducati's humiliation which would eventually lead to the 2007 Grand Prix Championship title. Steve Jobs describes how prosperous companies can be ruined by their own success because the executives stop questioning, for example, why exactly a particular product was a huge hit and then their next product is a failure.
This is a readable enlightening book.
September 5, 2015
Jamie Holmes's Nonsense: The Power of Not Knowing is brilliant. I was expecting it to be somewhat dry, as nonfiction often is, but it was a fast read. This is partly due to the fact that Holmes expresses and elaborates on psychological and cognitive studies through real life applications and events. Often I would pause after reading an argument Holmes makes because I can remember times in my life that I was affected by the principles described in the book. Nonsense was both thought provoking and fun, and I found myself entirely intrigued throughout. This book has the potential to change the way you think about the world around you...First, in the way that your brain understands; Second, in the way your brain perceives ambiguity; Third, how to utilize the benefits of said ambiguity.
I received this book in a Goodreads giveaway.
I received this book in a Goodreads giveaway.
August 29, 2017
Beautifully written, brilliantly organized, and very thought-provoking.
May 4, 2018
Although it took me forever to finish this book, it had nothing to do with its quality. It is interesting, brief and well-written enough to complete it in way shorter time, so don't take my timing as a bad sign of the book.
The book was about how "not understanding", about "Nonsense", right? But my cherry on top of the cake was the nice appearance of "Diversity" towards the end. A very dear topic to me, the one of diversity.
Overall, here's what I understood:
It seems that, while it is natural and convenient for us to put things in boxes and categorize them quickly based on our past experiences, and we recur to this (unconscious?) strategy especially when faced with ambiguity, this aversion to things that we don't understand can also have tragic consequences (in business, in relationships, in life...). While it is difficult and uncommon to do, accepting and being OK with ambiguity can be much more beneficial. We should always be looking to learn more -lifelong learning, another topic very close to my heart- and take the time when confronted with ambivalence to clarify before making any decision.
Interestingly enough, another area of my life where this can be useful is at work. In another set of materials not related to this book, I learned about cognitive overhead, which is defined as how many steps it takes for us to get to understanding something. When building products, we should aim at reducing this overhead or avoid it, so that the person using the product gets to do what they wanted to do without much effort. Simplicity.
So what I have learned about how our brains work when faced with "not knowing" is that:
1) I can use that to solve problems in a way that adapts to that way of people thinking so I keep things simple for them, but at the same time.
2) I can work on becoming aware of my "not knowing" and take the time to try and learn more, and hold decisions until a better time or avoid prejudices by doing this (I actually already applied this last point to my relationship when reading a book about marriage ambivalence).
But what was that about diversity that came at the end? Well, it turns out that when people are exposed to more than one language (e.g. bilinguals) or more than one culture long enough to understand them and accept them even if they are different, they are more likely to tolerate or be okay with ambiguity. They are less prejudiced. Meaning? While too much not knowing is bad, diversity in our lives is good! Sounds obvious, doesn't it? :)
The book was about how "not understanding", about "Nonsense", right? But my cherry on top of the cake was the nice appearance of "Diversity" towards the end. A very dear topic to me, the one of diversity.
Overall, here's what I understood:
It seems that, while it is natural and convenient for us to put things in boxes and categorize them quickly based on our past experiences, and we recur to this (unconscious?) strategy especially when faced with ambiguity, this aversion to things that we don't understand can also have tragic consequences (in business, in relationships, in life...). While it is difficult and uncommon to do, accepting and being OK with ambiguity can be much more beneficial. We should always be looking to learn more -lifelong learning, another topic very close to my heart- and take the time when confronted with ambivalence to clarify before making any decision.
Interestingly enough, another area of my life where this can be useful is at work. In another set of materials not related to this book, I learned about cognitive overhead, which is defined as how many steps it takes for us to get to understanding something. When building products, we should aim at reducing this overhead or avoid it, so that the person using the product gets to do what they wanted to do without much effort. Simplicity.
So what I have learned about how our brains work when faced with "not knowing" is that:
1) I can use that to solve problems in a way that adapts to that way of people thinking so I keep things simple for them, but at the same time.
2) I can work on becoming aware of my "not knowing" and take the time to try and learn more, and hold decisions until a better time or avoid prejudices by doing this (I actually already applied this last point to my relationship when reading a book about marriage ambivalence).
But what was that about diversity that came at the end? Well, it turns out that when people are exposed to more than one language (e.g. bilinguals) or more than one culture long enough to understand them and accept them even if they are different, they are more likely to tolerate or be okay with ambiguity. They are less prejudiced. Meaning? While too much not knowing is bad, diversity in our lives is good! Sounds obvious, doesn't it? :)
November 5, 2015
Holmes, Jamie. Nonsense: The Power of Not Knowing, Crown Publishers, New York, 2015 (322pp.$27)
“It is time for writers to admit that nothing in this world makes sense,” Chekhov wrote to a friend. “Only fools and charlatans think they know and understand everything…and if an artist decides to declare that he understands nothing of what he sees—this in itself constitutes a considerable clarity…” What Chekhov the artist knew instinctively is now confirmed by a half-century of research by social, cognitive and evolutionary psychologists, as well as considerable laboratory work by neuroscientists. Having first dug Freud’s scientific grave, modern science is now demonstrating how human brains fly largely on automatic pilot, exercising “control” over a world of sense impressions by imposing preconceptions and automatic response systems in the face of a life that is largely uncertain or ambiguous.
Read if you will, the following paragraph: “Aoccdrnig to research at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in what oerdr the ltteers in a word are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can still raed it wouthit porbelm.”
If you’re like most people, reading the two sentences is a piece of cake, even though the individual words are nonsense. In every practical sense, we should be happy that the brain works this way—filling in gaps, resolving discrepancies, and making small conjectures because, as psychologist Jordan Peterson explains, “The fundamental problem of life is the overwhelming complexity of being.” As humans we eradicate vast swathes of information, data, perception and detail in order to defer to working brain theories about what we’re going to encounter. “Belief,” as Flannery O’Conner once said, “is the engine that makes perception operate.”
Jamie Holmes’ new book, “Nonsense: The Power of Not Knowing” is a fascinating and high-speed romp through the latest research about how the brain processes our encounters with uncertainty (Which course of treatment will best cure my cancer?) and ambiguity (What does that expression on my wife’s face mean?) Holmes, a Future Tense Fellow at New America and a former research coordinator at Harvard’s economics department, holds an MIA from Columbia. His writing has appeared in major magazines, including “The Atlantic” and “Foreign Policy”. “Nonsense” is an easy-to-read but compelling gem of popular science writing that manages to functionally survey a broad range of research, while conveying surprising solutions to vexing questions of psychology by reference to such popular topics as disaster response, medical diagnosis, Absolut Vodka advertising, the Waco-Branch Davidian negotiation disaster, problem solving in Ducati motorcycle construction, mini-skirts in fashion and our modern-day fixation with conspiracy theory and radicalism in politics. Amazingly, each of these subjects is directly connected with our very human desire for clarity and certainty at any cost—in psychology, the so-called “functional fixedness” hard-wired into our heads.
Our urge towards clarity is prompted by physical pain. It hurts not to know. It is stressful. So it is that psychological pressures compel us to deny or dismiss inconsistent evidence, to seize and freeze on ideas and beliefs in areas of life completely unrelated to that source of anxiety. Sometimes we make decisions to resolve ambiguity by perceiving genuine ambivalence as calculating duplicity instead of realizing that ambivalence is more a natural state of mind that we realize. We might consider that wanting and not wanting something at the same time is so common that it is almost a baseline condition of human consciousness. Taking examples from the everyday world, Holmes’ book illuminates these ideas in practical ways not readily apparent at first glance. Our reliance on medical technology, for example, will never resolve the inherent ambiguity of treatment—in fact, the search for certainty carries its own risks. In politics, there are most often no “silver-bullet” solutions to problems like terrorism or poverty.
If there is a popular psychology “page turner” to be found, “Nonsense” is it. One brilliant modern experiment follows after another. Logic puzzles, mind games and perception challenges are all on display (What would you make of a deck of cards in which every spade was red and every heart was black?), making “Nonsense” both enjoyable and serious. But in important and significant ways, “Nonsense” transcends the popular bounds of its brief by exploring some genuinely troubling issues.
Our modern understanding of belief now shows that group decisions under a high need for closure mirror individual ones. In today’s ultra-uncertain world, with shifting economic and cultural realities, some groups naturally grab for far-fetched conspiracy theories while others fall back on hardline core beliefs. Experiments show that under time pressure to resolve an issue, groups marginalize members who voice opposition to a given consensus. Another study found that when stressful noise was introduced into decision-making group discussions, group members tolerated no opposition to their core beliefs. One 2012 study showed that the heightened need for closure has links to “support for militancy, torture, the use of secret prisons in foreign countries, and the notion that national security is more important than individual rights.” One can only see militant Islam as the quest for certainty in an uncertain modern world.
If this sounds familiar, it should. Voters regularly lend an ear to any demagogue who offers simple solutions to profound problems by easing their supporters into a comfort zone of core beliefs and deep conspiracy. “The Jews”, Hitler told the Germans, “are the source of your problems.” “Let’s destroy Saddam Hussein,” said George W. Bush, “and create a bright shining democracy in Iraq.” To counteract our need for immediate clarity, all of us should pause in our deliberations and dwell amid our feelings of uncertainty and confusion. Revisit our problems in different moods. Embrace confusion.
Henri Matisse once said that when he ate a tomato he looked at it like everyone else, but that when he painted a tomato, he saw it differently. By seeing the tomato as a collection of colors and shades, Matisse painted it faithfully.
“It is time for writers to admit that nothing in this world makes sense,” Chekhov wrote to a friend. “Only fools and charlatans think they know and understand everything…and if an artist decides to declare that he understands nothing of what he sees—this in itself constitutes a considerable clarity…” What Chekhov the artist knew instinctively is now confirmed by a half-century of research by social, cognitive and evolutionary psychologists, as well as considerable laboratory work by neuroscientists. Having first dug Freud’s scientific grave, modern science is now demonstrating how human brains fly largely on automatic pilot, exercising “control” over a world of sense impressions by imposing preconceptions and automatic response systems in the face of a life that is largely uncertain or ambiguous.
Read if you will, the following paragraph: “Aoccdrnig to research at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in what oerdr the ltteers in a word are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can still raed it wouthit porbelm.”
If you’re like most people, reading the two sentences is a piece of cake, even though the individual words are nonsense. In every practical sense, we should be happy that the brain works this way—filling in gaps, resolving discrepancies, and making small conjectures because, as psychologist Jordan Peterson explains, “The fundamental problem of life is the overwhelming complexity of being.” As humans we eradicate vast swathes of information, data, perception and detail in order to defer to working brain theories about what we’re going to encounter. “Belief,” as Flannery O’Conner once said, “is the engine that makes perception operate.”
Jamie Holmes’ new book, “Nonsense: The Power of Not Knowing” is a fascinating and high-speed romp through the latest research about how the brain processes our encounters with uncertainty (Which course of treatment will best cure my cancer?) and ambiguity (What does that expression on my wife’s face mean?) Holmes, a Future Tense Fellow at New America and a former research coordinator at Harvard’s economics department, holds an MIA from Columbia. His writing has appeared in major magazines, including “The Atlantic” and “Foreign Policy”. “Nonsense” is an easy-to-read but compelling gem of popular science writing that manages to functionally survey a broad range of research, while conveying surprising solutions to vexing questions of psychology by reference to such popular topics as disaster response, medical diagnosis, Absolut Vodka advertising, the Waco-Branch Davidian negotiation disaster, problem solving in Ducati motorcycle construction, mini-skirts in fashion and our modern-day fixation with conspiracy theory and radicalism in politics. Amazingly, each of these subjects is directly connected with our very human desire for clarity and certainty at any cost—in psychology, the so-called “functional fixedness” hard-wired into our heads.
Our urge towards clarity is prompted by physical pain. It hurts not to know. It is stressful. So it is that psychological pressures compel us to deny or dismiss inconsistent evidence, to seize and freeze on ideas and beliefs in areas of life completely unrelated to that source of anxiety. Sometimes we make decisions to resolve ambiguity by perceiving genuine ambivalence as calculating duplicity instead of realizing that ambivalence is more a natural state of mind that we realize. We might consider that wanting and not wanting something at the same time is so common that it is almost a baseline condition of human consciousness. Taking examples from the everyday world, Holmes’ book illuminates these ideas in practical ways not readily apparent at first glance. Our reliance on medical technology, for example, will never resolve the inherent ambiguity of treatment—in fact, the search for certainty carries its own risks. In politics, there are most often no “silver-bullet” solutions to problems like terrorism or poverty.
If there is a popular psychology “page turner” to be found, “Nonsense” is it. One brilliant modern experiment follows after another. Logic puzzles, mind games and perception challenges are all on display (What would you make of a deck of cards in which every spade was red and every heart was black?), making “Nonsense” both enjoyable and serious. But in important and significant ways, “Nonsense” transcends the popular bounds of its brief by exploring some genuinely troubling issues.
Our modern understanding of belief now shows that group decisions under a high need for closure mirror individual ones. In today’s ultra-uncertain world, with shifting economic and cultural realities, some groups naturally grab for far-fetched conspiracy theories while others fall back on hardline core beliefs. Experiments show that under time pressure to resolve an issue, groups marginalize members who voice opposition to a given consensus. Another study found that when stressful noise was introduced into decision-making group discussions, group members tolerated no opposition to their core beliefs. One 2012 study showed that the heightened need for closure has links to “support for militancy, torture, the use of secret prisons in foreign countries, and the notion that national security is more important than individual rights.” One can only see militant Islam as the quest for certainty in an uncertain modern world.
If this sounds familiar, it should. Voters regularly lend an ear to any demagogue who offers simple solutions to profound problems by easing their supporters into a comfort zone of core beliefs and deep conspiracy. “The Jews”, Hitler told the Germans, “are the source of your problems.” “Let’s destroy Saddam Hussein,” said George W. Bush, “and create a bright shining democracy in Iraq.” To counteract our need for immediate clarity, all of us should pause in our deliberations and dwell amid our feelings of uncertainty and confusion. Revisit our problems in different moods. Embrace confusion.
Henri Matisse once said that when he ate a tomato he looked at it like everyone else, but that when he painted a tomato, he saw it differently. By seeing the tomato as a collection of colors and shades, Matisse painted it faithfully.
February 17, 2020
Explains why fundamentalists annoy me. Some of the writing seemed muddled midway through...that's when I discovered the notes section, unlike in many books that contain extraneous notes, Holmes doesn't bother to make clear some of the sources he includes which then, of course, makes for muddy waters. Nevertheless, he does such a keen job from the Ducati section and onward, I am willing to overlook...in fact, I wonder if this was intentional...spirit of ambiguity and all that...
June 5, 2019
Good stories, but could basically all be summarized by the 12-step "Set aside prayer":
"Dear God, please help me to set aside everything I think I know about [people. place or thing] so I may have an open mind and a new experience."
"Dear God, please help me to set aside everything I think I know about [people. place or thing] so I may have an open mind and a new experience."
Want to read
January 30, 2020https://www.podbean.com/media/share/p...
Noesner FBI Negotiator recommends this book in this podcast which is worth listening to.
Noesner FBI Negotiator recommends this book in this podcast which is worth listening to.
December 11, 2016
As a father, I live a life of constant uncertainty mixed with devastating responsibility. Jamie Holmes has written a rather intriguing book for people of my sort: Nonsense: The Power of Not Knowing. In this book, Holmes reveals the natural reactions our brains have when faced with uncertainty, demonstrates the potential dangers of situations where we don't have all the answers, and explores possible benefits of not knowing.
Holmes has researched this topic thoroughly, but spares us the grind. Instead, he offers up sometimes amusing, sometimes heart-wrenching examples of the key concepts he is trying to get across. An ex-spy turned language instructor, a hostage negotiator, a clothing designer- all figure into the incredible lesson that we live in a world of the unknowable. The very act of trying to find an answer can sometimes be detrimental to us.
This book seemed to be written to me; I have dabbled in Spanish, German, and Chinese and the first story Jamie Holmes uses introduces the idea of how anxiety (which I suffer from!) impacts learning languages. Stylistically, I found this book to be a pleasant read- similar to another of my favorite science writers Sam Kean. If you are like me, and you liked The Disappearing Spoon, you will probably enjoy Nonsense: The Power of Not Knowing.
Another, perhaps more uncomfortable way that this book is evidence that Jamie Holmes is either spying on me or is the unwitting pawn of an alien plot- is that he writes about the problem of over-testing in medical diagnosis.
A few years ago I had a lump in my armpit. When my doctor saw it she said we could wait or do some surgical exploration. Surgical exploration won with nothing to show for it besides a new scar. So, she sent me to get an ultra-sound done on it. That test was inconclusive. Before another round of testing could commence, the lump went away. Had I read Nonsense, I may have proceeded differently because of a powerful segment from Chapter Five (which is titled "Overtested USA: When to Resist Momentum") which is as follows:
"No one can blame doctors, scientists, or policymakers for their enthusiasm and excitement over new technological tools. But our new ways of seeing aren't necessarily clearer ways of seeing, and sometimes, the illusion of knowing is more dangerous than not knowing at all." (emphasis and link added by me)
Overall, I find this book to have been both enjoyable and informative. I recommend it for those who have a high need for closure and those who love learning in general. Could probably be used as a primer for a course in this subject. While it's true that:
"I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review,"
I also researched what book I wanted to write a review on. Thank you, Blogging for Books!
Holmes has researched this topic thoroughly, but spares us the grind. Instead, he offers up sometimes amusing, sometimes heart-wrenching examples of the key concepts he is trying to get across. An ex-spy turned language instructor, a hostage negotiator, a clothing designer- all figure into the incredible lesson that we live in a world of the unknowable. The very act of trying to find an answer can sometimes be detrimental to us.
This book seemed to be written to me; I have dabbled in Spanish, German, and Chinese and the first story Jamie Holmes uses introduces the idea of how anxiety (which I suffer from!) impacts learning languages. Stylistically, I found this book to be a pleasant read- similar to another of my favorite science writers Sam Kean. If you are like me, and you liked The Disappearing Spoon, you will probably enjoy Nonsense: The Power of Not Knowing.
Another, perhaps more uncomfortable way that this book is evidence that Jamie Holmes is either spying on me or is the unwitting pawn of an alien plot- is that he writes about the problem of over-testing in medical diagnosis.
A few years ago I had a lump in my armpit. When my doctor saw it she said we could wait or do some surgical exploration. Surgical exploration won with nothing to show for it besides a new scar. So, she sent me to get an ultra-sound done on it. That test was inconclusive. Before another round of testing could commence, the lump went away. Had I read Nonsense, I may have proceeded differently because of a powerful segment from Chapter Five (which is titled "Overtested USA: When to Resist Momentum") which is as follows:
"No one can blame doctors, scientists, or policymakers for their enthusiasm and excitement over new technological tools. But our new ways of seeing aren't necessarily clearer ways of seeing, and sometimes, the illusion of knowing is more dangerous than not knowing at all." (emphasis and link added by me)
Overall, I find this book to have been both enjoyable and informative. I recommend it for those who have a high need for closure and those who love learning in general. Could probably be used as a primer for a course in this subject. While it's true that:
"I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review,"
I also researched what book I wanted to write a review on. Thank you, Blogging for Books!
December 18, 2015
“‘Uncertainty … is the engine of science” (p. 177).
Uncertainty, ambiguity, ambivalence: these are the subjects of Jamie Holmes’s treatise, and he takes pains to make us understand the value of each not only in the realm of science and art, but even in business. It’s an interesting series of hypotheses, and I felt on quite familiar turf with the statistics and multiple case studies Holmes draws upon using the standard tools of Experimental Psychology. (No accident, perhaps, given that Holmes and I both have our degrees from the same institution here on the Upper West Side, and that that institution, if I’m not mistaken, was effectively the birthplace of Experimental Psychology. I got my own introduction to Experimental Psych via Columbia’s Core Curriculum; I don’t know whether Jamie Holmes came by it through the same catechism.)
In addition to the observation of the climate scientist, Tamsin Edwards, I’ve used in the subject-line of this review, Holmes appropriately cites the psychoanalyst and philosopher Erich Fromm on p. 200: “(t)he capacity to be puzzled is indeed the premise of all creation, be it in art or in science.”
Is there abundant food for thought in these 233 pages? Most certainly! Will that food feed, nourish or ultimately change the world in any appreciable way? Most likely not—unless, of course, we radically change the way we choose to educate and reward our children.
In any case, give it a read. Doing so may allow you to appreciate the value of not jumping too quickly to closure on any of those matters that plague us in our daily lives. At which point, you can confidently pat yourself on the back for saying, in true Socratic style, “I know only that I know nothing”—and not being ashamed to admit it.
RRB
12/18/15
Brooklyn, NY
Uncertainty, ambiguity, ambivalence: these are the subjects of Jamie Holmes’s treatise, and he takes pains to make us understand the value of each not only in the realm of science and art, but even in business. It’s an interesting series of hypotheses, and I felt on quite familiar turf with the statistics and multiple case studies Holmes draws upon using the standard tools of Experimental Psychology. (No accident, perhaps, given that Holmes and I both have our degrees from the same institution here on the Upper West Side, and that that institution, if I’m not mistaken, was effectively the birthplace of Experimental Psychology. I got my own introduction to Experimental Psych via Columbia’s Core Curriculum; I don’t know whether Jamie Holmes came by it through the same catechism.)
In addition to the observation of the climate scientist, Tamsin Edwards, I’ve used in the subject-line of this review, Holmes appropriately cites the psychoanalyst and philosopher Erich Fromm on p. 200: “(t)he capacity to be puzzled is indeed the premise of all creation, be it in art or in science.”
Is there abundant food for thought in these 233 pages? Most certainly! Will that food feed, nourish or ultimately change the world in any appreciable way? Most likely not—unless, of course, we radically change the way we choose to educate and reward our children.
In any case, give it a read. Doing so may allow you to appreciate the value of not jumping too quickly to closure on any of those matters that plague us in our daily lives. At which point, you can confidently pat yourself on the back for saying, in true Socratic style, “I know only that I know nothing”—and not being ashamed to admit it.
RRB
12/18/15
Brooklyn, NY
December 17, 2015
My wife once told me that I had a low tolerance for ambiguity. This was many years ago and I am proud to say that I am much more open to the unknown than I was then. It has occurred to me that my love of poetry has always been a way to welcome ambiguity into my life. But this is also the reason so many people hate poetry. Because as a species, humans loathe the unknown. We want right answers and simple solutions. But what I always told my writing students (both in argumentative and creative writing classes): nothing worth writing about is easy or uncomplicated. I wish I could have had each one of them read this book before taking my class. Perhaps I would have met with less resistance and perhaps they would have enjoyed the writing process more. As a matter of fact, I wish this was required reading for everyone. Life is complicated and confusing and there are many situations in life where there are no "right" answers, there are just multiple choices, some of which offer better possible outcomes. So much is beyond our control or understanding. Nonsense: The Power of Not Knowing encourages us to embrace this fact to our advantage rather than brace ourselves against this fact to our detriment.
March 24, 2018
Cuốn sách này với mình nó chia ra làm 3 phần.
Phần 1: Non-sense tác giả viết rất đúng cái tựa, hoàn toàn vô nghĩa mình chẳng hiểu tác giả muốn nói cái gì luôn.
Phần 2: Sense, tác giả đi vào trọng tâm khi giải thích về cách thức con người ra quyết định trong những trường hợp bất định, cách con người mắc sai lầm nhưng như thế nào trong những trường hợp đó ... không quá hay nhưng nó ... make-sense. So sánh với "Phi lý trí" tác giả thua 1 bậc, so sánh "Tư duy nhanh và chậm" tác giả thua một đóng bậc, nhưng cũng chấp nhận được.
Phần 3: Tiếp tục ... là semi-sense, nó ... ngộ ngộ. Có 2 điểm hay ở đây là cách tác giả giới thiệu về giải pháp cho những tình huống non-sense bằng giải pháp phân rã chức năng cũng như câu chuyện về đa ngôn ngữ giúp chúng tăng cường tư duy như thế nào. Không liên quan đến chủ đề cuốn sách, nhưng ngôi trường chung của trẻ em Do Thái và Ả-rập như một ví dụ cho vấn đề đa ngôn ngữ là một ví dụ nhân văn và đẹp. Trẻ em không biết định kiến về chính trị hay tôn giáo, một ngôi trường để cả hai gặp gỡ là khởi đầu cho một thế giới thấu hiểu và nhiều cảm thông hơn. Vì cái ví dụ không liên quan đó mình nâng cho quyển sách thêm ... 1 sao vậy :).
Phần 1: Non-sense tác giả viết rất đúng cái tựa, hoàn toàn vô nghĩa mình chẳng hiểu tác giả muốn nói cái gì luôn.
Phần 2: Sense, tác giả đi vào trọng tâm khi giải thích về cách thức con người ra quyết định trong những trường hợp bất định, cách con người mắc sai lầm nhưng như thế nào trong những trường hợp đó ... không quá hay nhưng nó ... make-sense. So sánh với "Phi lý trí" tác giả thua 1 bậc, so sánh "Tư duy nhanh và chậm" tác giả thua một đóng bậc, nhưng cũng chấp nhận được.
Phần 3: Tiếp tục ... là semi-sense, nó ... ngộ ngộ. Có 2 điểm hay ở đây là cách tác giả giới thiệu về giải pháp cho những tình huống non-sense bằng giải pháp phân rã chức năng cũng như câu chuyện về đa ngôn ngữ giúp chúng tăng cường tư duy như thế nào. Không liên quan đến chủ đề cuốn sách, nhưng ngôi trường chung của trẻ em Do Thái và Ả-rập như một ví dụ cho vấn đề đa ngôn ngữ là một ví dụ nhân văn và đẹp. Trẻ em không biết định kiến về chính trị hay tôn giáo, một ngôi trường để cả hai gặp gỡ là khởi đầu cho một thế giới thấu hiểu và nhiều cảm thông hơn. Vì cái ví dụ không liên quan đó mình nâng cho quyển sách thêm ... 1 sao vậy :).
August 15, 2023
354(!) Посилання на джерела звідки взято шматки. Збірка понасмикуваного звідусіль.
Цілий розділ присвячений боротьбі героїчної тітки з системою постановки діагнозів бо їй, бачте, довелося побігати, поздавати аналізи і весь цей час вона думала що помирає через неоднозначні результати досліджень. Потуги автора довести на скільки марним є прагнення лікарів до однозначності викликали нудоту. І, як людина яка втратила чудового родича через те що лікарі вирішили обійтися узі замість мрт, я не відчуваю жодного каяття ставлячи таку оцінку. Не здивуюся якщо автор сидить на грантах від американських страхових компаній.
Особливо дратує оцей наратив "не все так адназначна" у типовій ультра ліберальній манері вестернерів-піпл плізерів який я б проковтнула ще роки 2 тому але не зараз.
Перша частина книжки взагалі нагадує переповнену валізу з психологічними експер��ментами які наштовхані один за одним і описані таким чином що доводиться перечитувати їх кілька разів щоб зрозуміти що автор хотів сказати цим прикладом і про що мова.
І вишенька на тортик: епілог повністю побудований на прикладі життя і творчості Чехова.
Наразі, це найгірша книжка за останні 2 роки.
Цілий розділ присвячений боротьбі героїчної тітки з системою постановки діагнозів бо їй, бачте, довелося побігати, поздавати аналізи і весь цей час вона думала що помирає через неоднозначні результати досліджень. Потуги автора довести на скільки марним є прагнення лікарів до однозначності викликали нудоту. І, як людина яка втратила чудового родича через те що лікарі вирішили обійтися узі замість мрт, я не відчуваю жодного каяття ставлячи таку оцінку. Не здивуюся якщо автор сидить на грантах від американських страхових компаній.
Особливо дратує оцей наратив "не все так адназначна" у типовій ультра ліберальній манері вестернерів-піпл плізерів який я б проковтнула ще роки 2 тому але не зараз.
Перша частина книжки взагалі нагадує переповнену валізу з психологічними експер��ментами які наштовхані один за одним і описані таким чином що доводиться перечитувати їх кілька разів щоб зрозуміти що автор хотів сказати цим прикладом і про що мова.
І вишенька на тортик: епілог повністю побудований на прикладі життя і творчості Чехова.
Наразі, це найгірша книжка за останні 2 роки.
December 2, 2016
A fascinating book. One, I think, worth going back and studying, now that I’ve finished an initial read, to consolidate my understanding of key takeaways and contemplate best practices for applying them.
The book’s contents, in brief, as pulled from the prologue:
“This book argues that we manage ambiguity poorly and that we can do better.”
Part 1 “lay[s] the groundwork.”
Part 2 “focuses on the hazards of denying ambiguity” in personal, professional, business, and organizational situations, among others.
Part 3 “highlights the benefits of ambiguity in settings where we’re more challenged than threatened: innovation, learning, and art.”
“In an increasingly complex, unpredictable world, what matters most isn’t IQ, willpower, or confidence in what we know. It’s how we deal with what we don’t understand.”
Holmes provides an abundance of real life examples, research and studies, and synthesizing commentary to make a strong case. For my tastes he was a bit heavy on illustrative anecdotes and a bit light on analysis, but both were there.
I’m of a mind to let the book speak for itself, both because I think the insights are worth sharing in a short form for those who might not read the book and to help me start that closer study mentioned above. The first three, longer quotes do a good job summarizing the first two parts of the book. The rest come from the last part, focused on positively applying the earlier ideas. Unlike many books of this type, I found that last part the most exciting and compelling, especially the bits I’ve pulled out here.
The book’s contents, in brief, as pulled from the prologue:
“This book argues that we manage ambiguity poorly and that we can do better.”
Part 1 “lay[s] the groundwork.”
Part 2 “focuses on the hazards of denying ambiguity” in personal, professional, business, and organizational situations, among others.
Part 3 “highlights the benefits of ambiguity in settings where we’re more challenged than threatened: innovation, learning, and art.”
“In an increasingly complex, unpredictable world, what matters most isn’t IQ, willpower, or confidence in what we know. It’s how we deal with what we don’t understand.”
Holmes provides an abundance of real life examples, research and studies, and synthesizing commentary to make a strong case. For my tastes he was a bit heavy on illustrative anecdotes and a bit light on analysis, but both were there.
I’m of a mind to let the book speak for itself, both because I think the insights are worth sharing in a short form for those who might not read the book and to help me start that closer study mentioned above. The first three, longer quotes do a good job summarizing the first two parts of the book. The rest come from the last part, focused on positively applying the earlier ideas. Unlike many books of this type, I found that last part the most exciting and compelling, especially the bits I’ve pulled out here.
The urge to resolve ambiguity is deeply rooted, multifaceted, and often dangerous. In times of stress, psychological pressures compel us to deny or dismiss inconsistent evidence, pushing us to perceive certainty and clarity where there is neither. Unpleasant anxiety can compel us to seize and freeze on ideas and beliefs in areas of life completely unrelated to the source of that anxiety.
-----
We’ve seen how easily we can misinterpret genuine ambivalence as calculating duplicity. When we’re trying to pin down someone’s intentions—whether the person is an employee, a boss, a customer, or a friend—we need to realize that ambivalence is a more natural state of mind than we ordinarily assume. Wanting and not wanting the same thing at the same time is so common that we might even consider it a baseline condition of human consciousness. When interpreting someone’s intentions, we should take into account that stressful circumstances make us more likely to ignore our natural human ambivalence.
-----
Our need for closure is a powerful force. It’s so deeply ingrained in everyday living that cultivating an awareness of how it works isn’t enough. Combating its dangers means designing institutions and processes that make us less likely to succumb to our natural tendencies toward resolution when it matters most.
-----
Another approach to helping students prepare for ambiguous challenges is to focus more directly on the emotions involved. A person’s comfort with confusion, the ability to admit that he or she is wrong, resilience, and the willingness to take risks are primarily emotional skills. Students have to grow comfortable not just with the idea that failure is a part of innovation but with the idea that confusion is, too.
-----
Lasting knowledge earns its keep by allowing itself to be persistently questioned. In any field, we gain true confidence when we allow our ideas and successes to be continuously challenged.
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The roots of prejudice can be traced to a general cognitive outlook characterized by the hunger for certainty.
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Having an open mind doesn’t imply having no opinion. It often implies having both opinions. It means not denying the supposed contradiction that victims can be victimizers and vice versa, a simple truth that dogmatists refuse to accept. Such contradictions fuel . . . art. The open-minded person, likewise, cultivates those tensions.
-----
Both empathy and creativity spring from the same source: diversity. Empathy, after all, is a fundamentally creative act by which we connect previously unimagined lives to our own. The path to embracing other cultures has to traverse the imagination. That’s why studies have shown that a high need for closure hurts creativity. And it’s why reading fiction—which puts us in other people’s shoes—can both lower our need for closure and make us more empathetic. Spending time among diverse social groups has the same effect.
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Cultivating ambiguity helps us keep an open mind and empathize with different viewpoints and . . . contradictions are a kind of fuel for human imagination.
-----
Take a guess as to how much you’ve changed over the last ten years on a scale from 1 to 10. Now, on the same scale, estimate how much you will change over the next decade. . . .
Most people, the psychologists wrote, “expect to change little in the future, despite knowing that they have changed a lot in the past.” We create a sharp division between our present, fixed self, and our past, evolving selves. We always think we’ve settled into ourselves, and we’re always wrong.
“The most interesting finding is that at every age, we feel like we’re done with our own evolution,” Quoidbach told me. “It’s like the present is what you’ve achieved after all those long years of changing. And now you’re done.”
-----
For Chekhov, morality lay not in our relationships with what we know, but in how admirably we deal with what we don’t. . . . Chekhov showed that not knowing doesn’t leave us without a compass, in some relativist nether land. Owning our uncertainty makes us kinder, more creative, and more alive.
November 25, 2019
I received this as a First Reads book on Goodreads. Thank you!
Holmes made me re-think my automatic response to instances of ambiguity in my life. I particularly liked the tests that are included because they gave me an opportunity to put into practice the concepts he is presenting. The tests are interesting and self-assessing. I was able to see how my mind processes ambiguity.
Overall I enjoyed the book very much and made the concepts Holmes presented my own and useful. There are an abundance of case studies that while in many cases interesting, they bogged down the book. Fewer of these and more discussion on the concepts would be better, I think.
Holmes made me re-think my automatic response to instances of ambiguity in my life. I particularly liked the tests that are included because they gave me an opportunity to put into practice the concepts he is presenting. The tests are interesting and self-assessing. I was able to see how my mind processes ambiguity.
Overall I enjoyed the book very much and made the concepts Holmes presented my own and useful. There are an abundance of case studies that while in many cases interesting, they bogged down the book. Fewer of these and more discussion on the concepts would be better, I think.
April 19, 2016
Eh, this book was OK; kind of all over the place but had some interesting tidbits, like the stuff about how language affects one's perspective. Too pop-sciency for my taste. Relied on too many anecdotes, as well as quotations from famous dead writers about ambiguity/uncertainty, and too many fishy conclusions drawn from such. Seemed maybe like a bunch of Atlantic articles strung together. But, it was a quick bedtime read. (As others have noted, the title is all wrong - it should have been "The Power of Uncertainty" or some such. "Nonsense" is all wrong.)
February 22, 2016
This has a few main premises:
1) People do not like uncertainty - like all human traits this varies from one person to the next in regards to how much this affects them.
2) From a business point of view making decisions based in uncertainty is problematic. People generally are in a hurry to bring closure to a problem and are likely to make rash decisions.
3) As a decision maker it is very important to constantly be aware of your state of mind at all times. If you do this you might be OK with accepting and living with uncertainty for a while
1) People do not like uncertainty - like all human traits this varies from one person to the next in regards to how much this affects them.
2) From a business point of view making decisions based in uncertainty is problematic. People generally are in a hurry to bring closure to a problem and are likely to make rash decisions.
3) As a decision maker it is very important to constantly be aware of your state of mind at all times. If you do this you might be OK with accepting and living with uncertainty for a while
December 22, 2015
Nonsense is an exploration of how powerful it can be to not-know, which sounds a little out-there and, of course, it is, and it's full of wonderful paradoxes that will zing your brain one-two, one-two.
March 12, 2016
Review coming soon
February 24, 2016
The book, like the title is mostly none sense.
An interesting story here and there but keep the title on your shelf and read it tomorrow, always tomorrow.
An interesting story here and there but keep the title on your shelf and read it tomorrow, always tomorrow.
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