The logic of failure
In The Logic of Failure, Dietrich Dörner identifies the roots of catastrophe, the small, perfectly sensible steps that set the stage for disaster. In incisive analysis of real-life situations and often hilarious computer simulations he helps all those involved in any kind of strategic planning recognize and avoid such logical yet devastating errors.
Stats for nerds
15recommend
26mentions
17people
2009–2025years
77% recommend23% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- > there not many books about failures! Any great recommendations?
The Logic of Failure is a fantastic book about failures, including some famous examples of failure (e.g. Chernobyl).
https://www.amazon.com/Logic-Failure-Recognizing-Avoiding-Si...
- list of (most of) the books mentioned in this thread so far. I tried reading every comment but used chatGPT instead.
1. The Big Rich - Texas oil boom.
2. Barbarians at the Gate - Private equity origins.
3. Masters of Doom - John Carmack and Id Software.
4. Einstein by Walter Isaacson - Einstein's discoveries.
5. Houdini!!! - The escape artist and magician.
6. The Double Helix - DNA discovery.
7. Stress Test by Tim Geithner - Financial crisis.
8. Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl - Concentration camp survival.
9. The Chariots of Apollo - NASA's space program.
10. Across the Airless Wilds by Earl Swift - Development of the moon buggy.
11. Apollo: The Race to the Moon by Charles Murray and Catherine Bly Cox - Apollo missions.
12. The Secret Life of Groceries by Benjamin Lorr - Food supply chains.
13. The Prize by Daniel Yergin - Oil industry evolution.
14. Shadow Divers by Robert Kurson - Ambitious wreck divers.
15. The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes - Manhattan Project.
16. American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin - Robert Oppenheimer.
17. Conquistador by Buddy Levy - Hernán Cortés and the Aztecs.
18. Cadillac Desert by Marc Reisner - Water infrastructure in the American West.
19. The Wright Brothers by David McCullough - The invention of flight.
20. Walt Disney by Neal Gabler - Vision and innovation in entertainment.
21. Tuxedo Park by Jennet Conant - Invention of radar.
22. Insisting on the Impossible - Edwin Land and instant photography.
23. The Logic of Failure - Understanding and avoiding failure.
24. The Big Short by Michael Lewis - 2008 financial crisis.
25. The Box by Marc Levinson - Shipping container revolution.
26. Latitude by Nicholas Crane - Cartography innovations.
27. When the Heavens Went on Sale by Ashlee Vance - Space startups.
28. The Founders by Jimmy Soni - PayPal's early days.
29. The Perfectionists by Simon Winchester - Precision engineering.
30. The Little Engine That Could - Children's classic.
31. Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell - Success mechanics.
32. Shoe Dog by Phil Knight - Founding of Nike.
33. Black Hole Blues by Janna Levin - Building LIGO.
34. Freedom’s Forge - WWII industry mobilization.
35. Empires of Light by Jill Jonnes - Electrification by Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse.
36. The Path Between the Seas by David McCullough - Panama Canal construction.
37. Annapurna by Maurice Herzog - Climbing a Himalayan peak.
38. Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder - Data General engineers.
39. Showstopper by G. Pascal Zachary - Development of Windows NT.
40. Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand - WWII survival.
41. The Measure of All Things by Ken Alder - Defining the meter.
42. The Cuckoo’s Egg by Clifford Stoll - Tracking a hacker.
43. The Man Who Knew Infinity by Robert Kanigel - Srinivasa Ramanujan.
44. The Power Broker by Robert Caro - Robert Moses and New York infrastructure.
45. How Big Things Get Done - Large-scale project execution.
46. Dealers of Lightning by Michael A. Hiltzik - Xerox PARC.
47. Built by Roma Agrawal - Civil engineering insights.
48. The Will to Keep Winning by Daigo Umehara - Competitive gaming.
49. Absolute Zero and the Conquest of Cold - Low-temperature physics.
50. Carrying the Fire by Michael Collins - Apollo 11.
- A couple favorites that haven't been mentioned:
'An Introduction to General Systems Thinking', Weinberg, and he's got a dozen more worthwhile books behind it.
'The Logic of Failure: Recognizing and Avoiding Error in Complex Situations', Dietrich Dorner
- The two iconic texts are:
- "The Collapse of Complex Societies" by Joseph Tainter (Amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/Collapse-Complex-Societies-Studies-Ar...)
- "Normal Accidents" by Chuck Perrow (Amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/Normal-Accidents-Living-High-Risk-Tec...)
Tainter deals directly with the Roman Empire, but the nutshell is the cost of complexity begins to outweigh its returns, requiring more and more resources just to maintain the status quo, until the entire thing becomes weak and susceptible to failures large and small.
- "Panarchy: Understanding Human and Natural Systems" (Amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/Panarchy-Understanding-Transformation...) is also a fantastic book drawing from ecosystem science and proposes a general model for this. It's pretty well accepted in ecological circles but has been criticised for a lack of empirical data. The general model is the same as Tainter's though.
- "The Logic of Failure" by Dietrich Dorner is also a classic! (https://www.amazon.com/Logic-Failure-Recognizing-Avoiding-Si...)
Well worth reading all of the above.
- You may enjoy the book called The Logic of Failure
- When it comes to our bio-ecosystem, I'm repelled by this kind of a question as, in general, I don't believe we understand ecosystems with complex interacting parts well at all .. and are therefore not well placed to make such sweeping changes to it .. at least not consciously.
The seminal book on this (for me) has been Dietrich Dörner's "The Logic of Failure".
Related
Outliers
99 recommend · 350
The Mind's I
36 recommend · 73
Drift into failure
7 recommend · 22
The Logic of Life
5 recommend · 13
Human error
2 recommend · 4
The Field Guide to Understanding Human Error
23 recommend · 57
Behind human error
4 recommend · 4
