Seeing Like a State

Legibility describes the very human tendency to simplify complex systems in order to exert control over them

Rating: 3/5 – Thought it would be better.

I’ve seen a lot of praise for this book by people that I trust, so I was surprised at how poorly it landed with me. I think I had the wrong expectations: the title of the book lead me to believe that it would cover a wide range of topics concerning government interventions and how those interventions look from the perspective of the state.

Instead, the book began as critique of central planning and eventually ended with what amounts to a discussion of “street smarts vs. book smarts”. While I will always enjoy discussions about the absurdity and hubris of a centrally planned economy, I kept hoping that the book would branch out into more varied topics. There was a bit too much focus on just how spectacularly so many attempts socialist ventures failed.

All that being said, the idea of legibility That is, an entities ability to measure and therefore acknowledge some aspect of reality. is useful and something that everyone should know about. It has wide reaching implications for any person who ever interacts with a bureaucratic system.

The ultimate message of the book – that tampering with complex systems is almost always a bad idea – is a good, though I think those topics are better explored in Taleb’s lengthy Incerto series.

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