Trio: Evolution of Everything; Ubiquity; Deep Simplicity

I read these three books in quick succession, and let me tell you, the effect is quite inspiring. They all attempt to convey the idea that many, many processes in the real worlds are best approached with some non-intuitive tools. To a greater or lesser degree they are non-linear, far-from-equilibrium, scale-free, networked and path-dependent. They exist in a state between order and randomness (sometimes called chaotic, in the mathematical sense) - arguably, this class of things is what makes life interesting (or even possible). Some examples discussed: earthquakes, stock market movements, animal populations, extinction events, epidemics, traffic jams, politics, climate, planetary orbits, wildfires - the list seems endless once you know what to look for.

Humans tend to look for "why" stories, and usually find them: it's not hard to find pairs of headlines like "market goes up because of jobs report" and "market goes down because of jobs report" when "market up/down" doesn't imply or require a "because" clause - that's just what it does, as a non-linear far-from-equilibrium process, no explanation necessary, no prediction possible. Because these things are scale-free, there is no "average" market correction or "average" epidemic. Because they are networked, there's no way to predict which shift of a rock in the earth's crust will "trigger" a massive earthquake.

E of E takes this further and points out that given these realities, "policy makers" are probably better off going and playing golf than actually trying to make policy: their efforts are almost guaranteed to fail. Most of what's made life immensely better for the majority of the world's population has been unforseen, unplanned, unintentional: agriculture, language, global trade, writing, the industrial revolution, limited government. Meanwhile, the list of things that intentional (albeit fatally flawed) planning have brought us include the Killing Fields, the Great Leap Forward, the Concentration Camps, and the Gulag.

All three are highly recommended.