The Art of Thinking Clearly

The Art of Thinking Clearly by Rolf Dobelli

I am currently reading the Dutch translation, but by the time you read this the English version should also have been published. Rolf Dobelli hails from Switzerland and, to place him, has among others been CEO of SwissAir. He's in management: founded www.getAbstract.com, holding 100's of management book abstracts. This book has as subtitle: 52 thinking errors you better leave to others. Reading this will increase your modesty, because, as will be quite clear, those thinking errors are also comitted by you not just by others. Let me give you a few examples, first some that we know from audio listening tests (here I go again): Confirmation Bias, Authority Bias, Groupthink, Framing.

One could ask the question: if we are such sloppy thinkers, how come humanity has done so well the last few 1000 centuries? The point is, that all these biases, predispositions and gut reactions have helped us to survive in the daily struggle on the savannah. It's just the last few 1000 years that our environment has been totally reshaped, requiring totally different proficiencies that evolution hasn't had a a chance yet to select for. One thing evolution did select for was a sentient, thinking brain, and that now helps to compensate for the shortcomings in our traditional automatic responses.

The Story Bias: We make up stories to give meaning to events. In hindsight it is easy to see how Greenspan's policy lead to the collapse of Lehman Brothers (which cost me personally about 30k$). But we also make up stories to give meaning to our own life, and that is necessary because without a story our life just hasn't any meaning. We want, we need stories. See YouTube 'Google Parisian Love'. It's just a commercial, but cunningly packaged as a story. Brilliant.