Obliquity

is an excellent book by John Kay (isbn 978-1846682889). As usual I'm going to quote from a few pages:

Happiness is not simply the aggregate of happy moments.

The modern philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre contrasts the business of fishing - designed and planned - with the practice of fishing - the methods and traditions which have evolved over the generations in a fishing community.

Shareholder value is the dumbest idea in the world. (Jack Welch)

Experience has shown that too much effort devoted to fire extinction is counter-productive. But some fire-control activity is essential.

The forests the National Park Service inherited were diverse, the product of thousands of years of unplanned development. In the 19th century German foresters rejected unplanned evolution in favour of design. You can still see such planned forests in many countries of Europe and North America: the trees are identical and evenly spaced… These forests are generally ugly, but were not very successful in economic terms, far more prone to accident and disease than the planters had anticipated. The foresters saw the trees but not the wood. You cannot necessarily deduce the properties of the whole by adding up the properties of the individual parts.

The context of the problem matters to our solution as much as the problem itself...

A plan of how he [Admiral James Stockdale] would survive would have been harmful, not helpful.

In tropical waters around the world, cleaner fish remove parasites from the mouths of predators. The large fish attend 'cleaning stations', and the smaller fish that congregate there swim into their jaws. Having performed their prophylactic service as they eat their meal, the small fish swim out again unharmed.

In complex systems the blind watchmaker may be more effective than the sighted one.

Evolution is smarter than you are.

It is more important to be right than to be consistent.

In obliquity we learn about the structure of a problem by the process of solving it.

The more we practise the better our judgements.