Why is the Mona Lisa the most famous painting in the world? Why did Facebook succeed when other social networking sites failed? Did the surge in Iraq really lead to less violence? How much can CEO’s impact the performance of their companies? And does higher pay incentivize people to work hard?

If you think the answers to these questions are a matter of common sense, think again. As sociologist and network science pioneer Duncan Watts explains in this provocative book, the explanations that we give for the outcomes that we observe in life—explanation that seem obvious once we know the answer—are less useful than they seem.

Drawing on the latest scientific research, along with a wealth of historical and contemporary examples, Watts shows how common sense reasoning and history conspire to mislead us into believing that we understand more about the world of human behavior than we do; and in turn, why attempts to predict, manage, or manipulate social and economic systems so often go awry.

It seems obvious, for example, that people respond to incentives; yet policy makers and managers alike frequently fail to anticipate how people will respond to the incentives they create. Social trends often seem to have been driven by certain influential people; yet marketers have been unable to identify these “influencers” in advance. And although successful products or companies always seem in retrospect to have succeeded because of their unique qualities, predicting the qualities of the next hit product or hot company is notoriously difficult even for experienced professionals.

Only by understanding how and when common sense fails, Watts argues, can we improve how we plan for the future, as well as understand the present—an argument that has important implications in politics, business, and marketing, as well as in science and everyday life.

鄧肯·J. 瓦茨

1. 小世界網絡之父，網絡科學奠基人之一。雅虎研究院和微軟研究院首席科學傢。哥倫比亞大學教授，影響全世界的康奈爾大學“A.D.懷特博文講座教授”。賓夕法尼亞大學工程學院、傳播學院和沃頓商學院教授，橫跨工程學、商學、社會科學三大領域。

[譯者簡介]

呂琳媛

1. 電子科技大學教授，國傢優秀青年科學基金獲得者，主要從事網絡信息挖掘與社會經濟復雜性方麵的研究，入選2018年《麻省理工科技評論》“中國35歲以下科技創新35人”。