Tim Harford: Trial, Error and the God Complex
Economics writer Tim Harford studies complex systems and finds a surprising link among the successful ones: they were built through trial and error. In this sparkling talk he asks us to embrace our randomness and start making better mistakes.
ABOUT TED
TED is a small Non Profit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. It started in 1984 as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment and Design.
ABOUT Tim Harford
“In the Undercover Economist column he writes for the Financial Times, Tim Harford looks at familiar situations in unfamiliar ways and explains the fundamental principles of the modern economy. He illuminates them with clear writing and a variety of examples borrowed from daily life.
His new book, ‘Adapt: Why Success Always Starts With Failure’, argues that the world has become far too unpredictable and complex for today’s challenges to be tackled with ready-made solutions and expert opinions.
Instead, he suggests, we need to learn to embrace failure and to constantly adapt, to improvise rather than plan, to work from the bottom up rather than the top down. He also presents the BBC radio series ‘More or Less’, a rare broadcast programme devoted, as he says, to “the powerful, sometimes beautiful, often abused but ever ubiquitous world of numbers. He says: “I’d like to see many more complex problems approached with a willingness to experiment.”
The VIDEO
1. Twitter 2. Book: Adapt: Why Success Always Starts with Failure 3. Book: The Logic of Hard Life 4. Book: Dear Undercover Economist: The Very Best Letters from the “Dear Economist” Column
