文档介绍：exity
Why Simple Things e
Complex
(And plex
Things Can Be
Made Simple)
Jeffrey Kluger
To my family,
for keeping things
simple
Contents
1 Prologue
chapter one
18 Why is the stock market so hard
to predict?
Confused by Everyone Else
chapter two
47 Why is it so hard to leave a burning
building or an endangered city?
Confused by Instincts
chapter three
77 How does a single bullet start
a world war?
Confused by Social Structure
chapter four
113 Why do the jobs that require the
greatest skills often pay the least?
Why panies with the least
to sell often earn the most?
Confused by Payoffs
chapter five
137 Why do people, mice, and worlds
die when they do?
Confused by Scale
contents viii
chapter six
159 Why do bad teams win so many
games and good teams lose so
many?
Confused by Objective
chapter seven
189 Why do we always worry about the
wrong things?
Confused by Fear
chapter eight
210 Why is a baby the best linguist in
any room?
Confused by Silence
chapter nine
232 Why are your cell phone and camera
so plicated?
Confused by Flexibility
chapter ten
255 Why are only 10 percent of the
world’s medical resources used
to treat 90 percent of its ills?
Confused by False Targets
chapter eleven
282 Why plexity science fall
flat in the arts?
Confused by Loveliness
303 Epilogue
309 Author’s Notes
313 Index
About the Author
Other Books by Jeffrey Kluger
Credits
Cover
Copyright
Prologue
London 1854
to anyone paying attention on
the morning of August 29, the death of the little girl at 40
Broad Street did not seem like a terribly remarkable
thing. Not many people in the London neighborhood
where the girl had lived even knew her name—small chil-
dren being something of an modity in so
overrun a place as Broad Street. Indeed, it’s entirely possi-
ble no one outside the child’s immediat