kvmgaming.blogg.se - You are not so smart book review

If I'd followed some of the arguments in David McRaney's "You Are Not So Smart: Why You Have Too Many Friends on Facebook, Why Your Memory Is Mostly Fiction, and 46 Other Ways You're Deluding Yourself" (2011) I wouldn't be writing this (or any other) review, because the very act of trying to explain it would change the way I feel about it and how can someone really understand someone else's feelings? And how do you describe the color red, anyway? This book is marketed alternately as sociology and social sciences (Audible), cognitive psychology (Google Books), humanism (Amazon) and humor (Barnes & Noble). Brand loyalty - We reach for the same brand not because we trust its quality but because we want to reassure ourselves that we made a smart choice the last time we bought it.

Confirmation bias - Our brains resist new ideas, instead paying attention only to findings that reinforce our preconceived notions.

Hindsight bias - When we learn something new, we reassure ourselves that we knew it all along.

If you have more than 150 Facebook friends, they are surely not all real friends.

Dunbar's Number - Humans evolved to live in bands of roughly 150 individuals, the brain cannot handle more than that number.

It's like a psychology class, with all the boring parts taken out, and with no homework.Based on the popular blog of the same name, You Are Not So Smart collects more than 46 of the lies we tell ourselves everyday, including: You Are Not So Smart is a celebration of self-delusion. You believe you are a rational, logical being who sees the world as it really is, but journalist David McRaney is here to tell you that you're as deluded as the rest of us. Each short chapter–covering topics such as Learned Helplessness, Selling Out, and the Illusion of Transparency–is like a psychology course with all the boring parts taken out.īringing together popular science and psychology with humor and wit, You Are Not So Smart is a celebration of our irrational, thoroughly human behavior.An entertaining illumination of the stupid beliefs that make us feel wise.

Growing out of David McRaney’s popular blog, You Are Not So Smart reveals that every decision we make, every thought we contemplate, and every emotion we feel comes with a story we tell ourselves to explain them, but often these stories aren’t true. You’re just as deluded as the rest of us–but that’s okay, because being deluded is part of being human. Whether you’re deciding which smart phone to purchase or which politician to believe, you think you are a rational being whose every decision is based on cool, detached logic, but here’s the truth: You are not so smart. An entertaining illumination of the stupid beliefs that make us feel wise.