Quote of the week, from computational sociologist, Duncan Watts:

[W]hy does rocket science seem hard, while problems to do with people – which in some respects are clearly much harder – seem like they ought to be just a matter of common sense?
“As it turns out, the key is common sense itself. Common sense is exquisitely adapted to handling the kind of complexity that arises in everyday situations, such as how to behave at work versus in front of your children versus in the pub with your mates. And because it works so well in these situations, we’re inclined to trust it.

But situations involving corporations, cultures, markets, nations and global institutions exhibit a very different kind of complexity. Large-scale social problems necessarily involve anticipating or managing the behaviour of many individuals in diverse contexts over extended periods of time.

Duncan Watts, computational social scientist

Quote: Everything Is Obvious: How Common Sense Fails Us