I was in search of book similar to the “Idiot Brain”. So, my English teacher suggested me this book.
What excited me about this book is something that we might have experienced in our life at least once. Have you ever thought about your past actions and got a feeling “How stupid of me to do that?”, “How could I think that way?” or similar feeling where you are surprised about your action. It seems inexplainable, feels like it is not our brain.
Our brain makes predictable errors more often than we realize. We can make better decisions in life by recognizing and then cutting out some common errors of judgement that we fall prey to on a regular basis. This book includes 99 of these errors in individual chapters. Each chapter has explained elaborately why our brain takes that decision with daily life examples.
There are certain thinking errors explained in the book that helped me realize a number of things about my life.
Let me share a few of interesting ones with you. Of course, I don’t want to spoil your fun of reading the book, so I will keep it short:
- One of the examples talks about Social Proof. Have you ever watched a movie whose IMDB Rating is very low but still you liked it? Or you didn’t like the food of most popular restaurant in your locality?
Our brain believes that popular means great quality and vice versa. We feel that we are behaving correctly when we act the same as other people. This is the evil behind Stock Market panic. The topic of this chapter is very interesting. It is “If 50 billion people say something foolish, it’s still foolish”.
- Another chapter talks about the paradox of choice. Our brain always wants more and more choices. We go to restaurant having many dishes, theme park with most rides, etc. Just think weather these choices are bringing joy or stress. We get confused while selecting one and we regret it if we fail to enjoy the selected one.
The paradox of choice chapter explains that beyond a level, more choice doesn’t translate to better life or more happiness. Rather it can lead to unhappiness and stress!
- Another example explains why evil strikes harder than good to us? We fear loss more than we value gain. Losing 100 dollars costs you greater amount of happiness than the delight you would feel if you gain 100 dollars. We remember bad behavior of people than good – except, of course, when it comes to ourselves.
- Next example is the most common mistake that our brain makes. Have you ever watched a movie in theatre that you didn’t like but you still watched it to utilize the money? Dobelli explains that regardless of whether you continue watching movie or not, money is already gone.
- The epilogue of this book is one of the best summaries which I’ve ever read. I’ll not disclose it here. You’ll have to read it.
- The best thing about this book is the scientific reasoning. For example, in the Art of Clear Thinking, Dobelli claims that most of our biases are the result of human evolution. Assume that you are born thousands of years ago and you are walking in a forest with your friends. Suddenly all your friends start running. You wouldn’t stop and think before running after them unless you want to end up as lunch for the resident Tiger. People who did think for long quickly exited from human gene pool! Dobelli claims that these behaviors are no longer useful in the modern world where logic and reasoning is the king.
The book has short chapters and clear explanations that use simple, real world examples to illustrate the point. You can apply them to improve and make better decisions in countless aspects of your life.