Bad thoughts
Posted 5 November 2004, 18:11. (Filed under: Reviews by Andrew)
Bad Thoughts: A Guide to Clear Thinking — Jamie Whyte
- Paperback 160 pages (November 1, 2003)
- Publisher: Corvo Books
- ISBN: 0954325532
I heard about this book via an article in New Scientist (paid subscription required), in which the author was interviewed.
I finished reading it last night, and I’m in two minds about it. I enjoyed Whyte’s analysis of management consultancy jargon. He proposes a few sample phrases and dissects one of them to show that it holds very little meaning. He has no objection to management consultancy per se, but states that the conclusions drawn tend to sound simple: “You need to cut your workforce or increase sales” doesn’t sound like it’s worth many thousands of pounds of fees, but, when dressed up in jargon in a sixty page report, people believe it is more valuable, even though the original meaning is obfuscated beyond comprehension.
A lot of his writing is dedicated to showing that we justify our opinions using misguided reasoning. We either accept the arguments of people who have no authority in the field in question, or we get “morality fever” by assuming, for example, that victims of crime are experts on crime.
There are two areas in which I think he comes unstuck. The first is his writing style. The book reads rather like an extended rant on a website (sound familiar?). Some of his arguments could do with some restructuring work to make them clearer. I also think he needs about another handful of commas, just to make his sentences a tad more precise.
My second gripe is his obsession with logic which seems to make him over-simplify some concepts he deals with (most notably the Holy Trinity). Albert Einstein said, “A scientific theory should be as simple as possible, but no simpler”. I can apply this to a wide range of things, including beliefs. If my reason for holding a belief rests in a complex or detailed part of that belief, then it is quite likely to look absurd once all the detail has been stripped away.
So, all in all quite an interesting read, if slightly less thought-provoking than I had expected.
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