If bestselling popsci books each contribute one major idea to the mainstream, then Range's major contribution seems to be the idea of 'wicked' and 'kind' learning environments.
Not bad for a research idea that was first published in 2015!
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(I believe Hogarth has worked on this before 2009, because parts of this idea shows up in Kahneman's and Klein's paper on the limits of expert intuition).
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The idea: some learning domains are kind — you can easily pick up cues in the environment. Some learning domains are wicked — you can't pick up cues, and therefore can't build expertise.
Where I think Epstein will err (in Range) is insisting that the world is more wicked.
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In practice, I think the world has good bits of both. Kahneman and Klein calls this "fractionated pools of expertise"
Programming skill, for instance, is kind. But making career decisions isn't.
Managing humans is kind, but managing business isn't.
Most things are a mix.
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