Alchemy: The Surprising Power of Ideas That Don't Make Sense

by Rory Sutherland

My problem with Marxism is that it makes too much sense.

Marx

Ricardo’s Theory of Comparative Advantage,

The late David Ogilvy, one of the greats of the American advertising industry and the founder of the company I work for, apparently once said, ‘The trouble with market research is that people don’t think what they feel, they don’t say what they think, and they don’t do what they say.’

All too often, what matters is not whether an idea is true or effective, but whether it fits with the preconceptions of a dominant cabal.

Some of the funding for anti-vaping campaigns came from large pharmaceutical companies, which saw the devices as threatening their investment in less potent quitting treatments such as patches or gum.

Also, we have a culture that prizes measuring things over understanding people, and hence is disproportionately weak at both seeking and recognising psychological answers.

As Nassim Nicholas Taleb remarks, ‘the way a question is phrased is itself information’.

a Caribbean proverb, ‘Trust grows at the speed of a coconut tree and falls at the speed of a coconut.’

Why is there a reluctance to accept that life is not just a narrow pursuit of greater efficiency and that there is room for opulence and display as well? Yes, costly signalling can lead to economic inefficiency, but at the same time this inefficiency establishes valuable social qualities such as trustworthiness and commitment – politeness and good manners are costly signalling in a face-to-face form.

There is an important lesson in evaluating human behaviour: never denigrate a behaviour as irrational until you have considered what purpose it really serves.