71 Quotes by Tim Harford

And the fundamental point of all these massively parallel experiments is the same: when a problem reaches a certain level of complexity, formal theory won’t get you nearly as far as an incredibly rapid, systematic process of trial and error.

It is not polite to say so, but it is obvious that paying people to be unemployed encourages unemployment. Yet, if a government scrapped unemployment benefit, there would still be jobless people, and supporting the jobless is something that every civilised society should do. The truth is that we have a trade-off: it is bad to encourage unemployment but good to support those without incomes.

The complexity of the society we have created for ourselves envelops us so completely that, instead of being dizzied, we take it for granted.

In Iraq, the Army discovered that if the official hierarchy was on a disastrous course, it was vital to bypass it in order to adapt. Petraeus.

Companies pay amazing amounts of money to get answers from consultants with overdeveloped confidence in their own intuition,’ he.

Palchinsky principles’: first, seek out new ideas and try new things; second, when trying something new, do it on a scale where failure is survivable; third, seek out feedback and learn from your mistakes as you go along. The.

But many of us love the fact that Ricardo was able, nearly two hundred years ago, to produce insights that illuminate our understanding today. It’s easy to see the difference between nineteenth-century farming and twenty-first-century frothing, but not so easy to see the similarity before it is pointed out to us. Economics is partly about modelling, about articulating basic principles and patterns that operate behind seemingly complex subjects like the rent on farms or coffee bars.

Ten rules of thumb are still a lot for anyone to remember, so perhaps I should try to make things simpler. I realize that these suggestions have a common thread – a golden rule, if you like. Be curious.

Much of what we think of as cultural differences turn out to be differences in income.