Rory Sutherland

Disclaimer: My copy of Alchemy: The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business, and Life is an uncorrected proof that I acquired from LibraryThing's May 2019 "early reviewers" batch. I presume that the final published text doesn't differ significantly from this proof.

Rory Sutherland's Alchemy is quite the frustration. The basic underlying premise that logical calculation and deduction doesn't solve all problems, sometimes requiring occasional bold and seemingly illogical excursions outside the box, is valid, insightful, and increasingly relevant to life today. Sutherland's approach to exploring and explaining that premise is a careless unsubstantiated mess.

Sutherland's approach largely boils down to declaring all methods of logic and statistics and science to be deeply ineffectual and wrong in order to highlight cases in which outside-the-box boldness and serendipity (idea "alchemy"?) are better or more effective. He does admit from time to time that it's not that simple or absolute, but maintains this tone across much of the book nonetheless.

While this approach does effectively spotlight an interesting path of illogcal "alchemy" and "magic" solutions, it also severely undermines the spotlighter's credibility by seemingly condemning all logical methodologies in comparison as ineffective and without value. His apparently huge survivorship bias concerning anecdotes of successful "ah-ha" discoveries doesn't help.

Sutherland fails to consider that human progress may not be the result of occasional victories of "good" illogcal creativity over "bad" methodical logic, but rather of a perpetual complex interplay between the two.

Other books I've read recently that do a much better job of exploring this same underlying logic-vs-creativity (and related computer-vs-brain) territory include:
• Being Wrong, by Kathryn Schulz
• Scatterbrain, by Henning Beck… (altro)