The Hidden Half: The Unseen Forces That Influence Everything

It’s annoying that so many of the endorsements from other writers say this book is well written - it isn’t. The style is unbelievably repetitive. Time and again a single example (that could’ve been summarised in a paragraph) is discussed for multiple pages, with the same point being repeated endlessly: we don’t entirely understand this phenomenon and / or we can’t accurately predict it.The examples are interesting and diverse, but there is no real attempt to explain the limits of our understanding in each case - is it a cognitive shortcoming, a consequence of randomness / chaos, the result of too many interacting variables...? The content feels very thin, leaving the idea of a hidden half only vaguely outlined (despite being mentioned endlessly) without ever really digging into its nature.As it is, it could have been summarised in a short article or blog post, to the effect that ‘much of what we claim to understand is more complex and unpredictable than we’d like’. It’s a shame because with some tighter editing and a bit more thought to the underlying causes of the ‘hidden half’ this could have been a much better book. If you’re interested in such ideas I would recommend instead trying Tim Harford’s books Adapt and Messy: both very well written and engaging. On the psychology of uncertainty, I’d recommend Jamie Holmes’ excellent book Nonsense: The Power of Not Knowing.