Knowledge and decisions
"With a new preface by the author, this reissue of Thomas Sowell's classic study of decision making updates his seminal work in the context of The Vision of the Annointed, Sowell, one of America's most celebrated public intellectuals, describes in concrete detail how knowledge is shared and disseminated throughout modern society. He warns that society suffers from an ever-widening gap between firsthand knowledge and decision making--a gap that threatens not only our economic and political efficiency, but our very freedom because actual knowledge gets replaced by assumptions based on an abstract and elitist social vision of what ought to be. Knowledge and Decisions, a winner of the 1980 Law and Economics Center Prize, was heralded as a "landmark work" and selected for this prize "because of its cogent contribution to our understanding of the differences between the market process and the process of government." In announcing the award, the center acclaimed Sowell, whose "contribution to our understanding of the process of regulation alone would make the book important, but in reemphasizing the diversity and efficiency that the market makes possible, [his] work goes deeper and becomes even more significant.""--publisher description (LoC)
Stats for nerds
4recommend
9mentions
6people
2010–2025years
67% recommend33% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Some books I would put on this list: Knowledge and Decisions by Thomas Sowell, Le Rouge et le Noir by Stendhal, Up From Slavery by Booker T. Washington, 1984 by George Orwell.
- Knowledge and Decisions by the same is also a great book.
- A column or collection of random quotes will never adequately summarize a thinker - however his books "Knowledge and Decisions" and "A Conflict of Visions" both rank as masterpieces.
- >An underlying premise of Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange is that there’s tremendous amounts of knowledge tied up in “ordinary” people, and given an easy way to show it off and a little incentive they can make this knowledge available and help as many people as possible.
That is the underlying premise of free market economics and small-government conservatism, too. Go read some Thomas Sowell, a lot of his books discuss the issue, especially A Conflict of Values and, in more detail, Knowledge and Decisions.
- This is the reason government regulation never works as well as the regulators expect. It is the distinction between "tacit" knowledge and "explicit" knowledge. Most tacit knowledge is both local and non-verbal, some can be explained after the fact, like the chick sexing technique, but the verbal description itself isn't the useful part. And it is contained in the heads of the people actually doing the work so it is rarely, if ever, taken into proper account when formulating regulations.
For a really good explanation of the differences and the problems caused, read Thomas Sowell's Knowledge and Decisions. Hayek's Use of Knowledge in Society also discusses this, as do other books and essays, but Sowell's is more readable and his examples are closer to contemporary (it was written in the late 1970s and published in 1981).
- Sowell's Basic Economics is the easiest to read one I have seen, and for the math phobic it has no equations.
Another really good, if idiosyncratic, book is David Friedman's Hidden Order: The Economics of Everyday Life.
Also Thomas Sowell's Knowledge and Decisions covers roughly the same ground as Hayek's Use of Knowledge in Society, but is newer and more readable.
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