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Author: Visit Amazon's Rolf Dobelli Page
ISBN : 0062219685
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Format: PDF
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*Starred Review* Why do we stay in bad relationships or stubbornly hold on to failing investments? Dobelli, author and founder of Zurich.Minds, a community of thinkers, explores the natural tendencies we have to think illogically and how we can overcome them. This is not a facile how-to book but a serious examination of the faulty reasoning that leads to repeated mistakes by individuals, businesses, and nations. Among the logical errors Dobelli explores are survivorship bias, or systematic overestimation of the chances for success, and social proof (otherwise known as herd mentality), or feeling that an action or decision is correct because so many others are doing the same thing. Herd mentality is often demonstrated in the stock market, triggering bubbles and panics alike. Dobelli warns against the influence of so-called experts, news anchors, beautiful people, teams of workers, and others, cautioning readers to learn to think clearly for themselves. He offers some 99 common errors, drawing on social science, psychology, economics, and politics for amusing and sobering examples of the failure to think logically. In this fascinating book, Dobelli does not offer a recipe for happiness but a well-considered treatise on avoiding “self-induced unhappiness.” --Vanessa Bush
Review
“A fireworks show of insights into how our minds work. If you want to avoid tripping on cognitive errors, read this book.” (Iris Bohnet, Professor and Academic Dean, Harvard Kennedy School, Director of the Harvard Decision Science Laboratory)
“Dobelli examines our most common decision-making failings with engaging eloquence and describes how to counter them with instructive good sense.” (Robert Cialdini, author of
Influence)
“…a serious examination of the faulty reasoning that leads to repeated mistakes by individuals, businesses, and nations…In this fascinating book, Dobelli does not offer a recipe for happiness but a well-considered treatise on avoiding ‘self-induced unhappiness.’” (Booklist (starred review))
“…easy-going prose…what [Dobelli] does is pinpoint exactly the assumptions, bias and illusions that shape our thinking and decision-making processes in both business and personal relationships that can cost us dearly as individuals and as a society.” (Financial Times)
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Download latest books on mediafire and other links compilation Free The Art of Thinking Clearly
- Hardcover: 384 pages
- Publisher: Harper; 1 edition (May 14, 2013)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0062219685
- ISBN-13: 978-0062219688
- Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 6 x 1.2 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Free The Art of Thinking Clearly
I'm not sure why so many readers enjoyed this book. First of all, if you act how the book tells you to act, you are going to be a jerk. Second, I possess only the most basic familiarity with Bayesian statistics, economics and heuristics and I found this book to not only oversimplified but patently wrong in many places. Amazingly, this book falls victim to many (if not most) of the fallacies of which it attempts to disabuse the reader. Three examples:
1. The chapter explaining Base Rate Bias (which says we systematically fail to account for the base rate of an event's occurrence) uses the example of Mike, a fan of Mozart. Is Mike more likely to be a truck driver or an English professor? If you said "professor" you're wrong because you fell victim to the "base rate bias." Hahahaha. Isn't irrationality funny? There are 100 times more truck drivers than English professors so it's statistically more likely that Mike is a truck driver, right? WRONG. We actually don't know the answer. This example succumbs to the very bias it ostensibly reveals. Mike-is-a-truck-driver makes sense as an answer only if the incidence of Mozart-liking in English Professors is less than 100 times greater than the incidence of Mozart-liking in truck drivers. In other words, we cannot say whether Mike is more likely to be a truck driver unless we know the BASE RATE of Mozart-liking. If the incidence of Mozart-liking in English professors is 75% but only .001% in truck drivers, it's more likely that Mike is an English professor even if there are 100 times as many truck drivers as English professors. Yet, the author sticks by his "rational" conclusion that Mike is more likely to be a truck driver.
2.