A while back there was an article in the Atlantic, titled This Article Wont Change Your Mind, that explained how facts are unpersuasive. This led me to do a little research into cognitive biases, the habits of our mind that lead us to disregard evidence and facts that run counter to our intuitions and prior beliefs. The more I looked into this, the more this title kept coming up. A world-wide best-seller (including 80 weeks in Germany) it has become hugely influential and with good reason. Originally a weekly column in Germany, Holland and Switzerland, it contains 99 short chapters each one dealing with a different type of cognitive bias- those habits of the mind that interfere with our ability to make rational decisions. Some of these are already well known such as the "Halo Effect" that makes us more like, trust and believe attractive people more than we like, trust and believe plain looking people. The Halo effect is the reason why Jennifer Aniston makes 10 million a year endorsing things and the best that I've ever done is some discounted wings and a Tim's card. Or the confirmation bias that leads us to disregard information that contradicts what we already believe and remember information that agrees with our opinion. Climate change deniers are ardent practitioners of this. Then there's the American president's favourite, the availability heuristic- whatever comes to mind easily is deemed important. Truely, there is no such things as bad publicity. The book didn't stop there though. Every chapter dug a little deeper into how our minds work and explained how the biases interacted with one another. How our tendency to go along with the crowd (the bandwagon effect) is in part due to our tendency to favour ideas endorsed by people we know- the in-group bias- and how this in turn leads to group-think where terrible ideas are adopted because everyone fears the social repercussions of objecting to them (loss-aversion bias). The book is very interesting and informative, but I couldn't help but wonder as I went through it if some of these so called "biases" were just part of being human and having a personality. I mean some people are overly optimistic and tend minimize future difficulties downplaying evidence that contradicts their rosy outlook. Is this an example of people systematically overestimating their chances of success, AKA the survivor-ship bias? And what about those people that adopt a bleak future outlook, who consistently catastrophize and are drawn to tragedy? Are they suffering from the negativity bias- the psychological phenomenon by which humans have greater recall of unpleasant memories? Dobelli finds irrationality wherever he looks. The final chapter is an interesting one. In it he advises people to stop following the news and promises you will happier and healthier as a result. It is similar to this article here. Give it a read and if you like it, send me an email. I would be happy to pass along the book.
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