I just finished that book. He seems to think of practical wisdom as being what helps with things like bounded rationality, fuzzy categorization, reasoning by analogy with previous experience, and developing mastery in a craft. He gives lots of examples of how institutions degrade practical wisdom by using rules or incentives to guide people instead (e.g. the practice of medicine being taken over by insurance companies, childhood education becoming drills to cram test-taking knowledge, judges’ judgement being replaced by mandatory minimum sentencing). And he discusses ways in which institutions can buck that to empower people to develop and deploy practical wisdom.
I didn’t feel I learned a lot from the book. I think it could have been usefully reduced to a long essay. There was lots of rehashing of anecdotes, tangents into questionably-related subjects, and arguments that seemed more like assertions and applause-lines. Nothing egregious: pretty much on-par for mass-market nonfiction stuff these days.
I just finished that book. He seems to think of practical wisdom as being what helps with things like bounded rationality, fuzzy categorization, reasoning by analogy with previous experience, and developing mastery in a craft. He gives lots of examples of how institutions degrade practical wisdom by using rules or incentives to guide people instead (e.g. the practice of medicine being taken over by insurance companies, childhood education becoming drills to cram test-taking knowledge, judges’ judgement being replaced by mandatory minimum sentencing). And he discusses ways in which institutions can buck that to empower people to develop and deploy practical wisdom.
I didn’t feel I learned a lot from the book. I think it could have been usefully reduced to a long essay. There was lots of rehashing of anecdotes, tangents into questionably-related subjects, and arguments that seemed more like assertions and applause-lines. Nothing egregious: pretty much on-par for mass-market nonfiction stuff these days.