New edition of the book 'The Art of Thinking Clearly'. One of the leading modern thinkers, Rolf Dobelli, explains how to learn to think differently, avoid falling victim to mental errors, and always act to your advantage and benefit.
Millions of people make wrong decisions every day. How many times, at the moment of choice, we did not think, but succumbed to instincts, emotions, and other people's opinions. How many times we mistakenly believed that we had foreseen everything. How many times we mourned losses instead of seizing new opportunities. It is easy to fall into a 'mental trap', but sometimes the wrong choice can cost you a career, savings, and even personal happiness.
This book is insurance against misfortunes for which you yourself may be to blame. It teaches you to see mental traps and act consciously. Rolf Dobelli, one of the leading modern thinkers, describes common mental fallacies that cause us to make poor decisions. The author has collected 52 stories that will help you see the world differently and discover errors in your own behavior. These stories are witty, unusual, funny, and sometimes read like jokes. But after them—click! — something happens in your head and you begin to think more clearly, anticipate mistakes and avoid them.
Who is this book for?
For everyone who wants to make balanced and informed decisions, without clinging to prejudices, the opinions of others and imaginary benefits.
From the author
Mental errors, as I call them, are systematic deviations in our rationality, a departure from logical, optimal, reasonable thinking and behavior. The word 'systematic' is important, because we often follow the same path in our errors. For example, overestimating your knowledge is much more common than underestimating it. Or, say, the danger of losing something: this threat clearly throws us off balance faster than the possibility of winning. Mathematicians would call this phenomenon 'skew,' an asymmetrical distribution of our mental errors. Fortunately, asymmetry sometimes allows us to foresee such errors.
To avoid losing my savings from writing and entrepreneurship through thoughtlessness, I started keeping a list of systematic mental errors, and at the same time began writing down short stories and anecdotes on the corresponding topic. Without any intention of publishing. I did this just like that, for myself. But soon I discovered that the list turns out to be useful not only in financial matters, but also in entrepreneurship and even in my personal life.
Knowing my own mental errors allowed me to become calmer, more reasonable, and balanced: now I saw my wrong steps and learned to take measures to avoid the consequences before they harm me too much. And for the first time, I began to recognize the unreasonable actions of others and was able to confront them fully armed—sometimes even with an advantage. But most importantly, it allowed me to free myself from the looming ghosts of irrationality in behavior: now I had at hand the categories, concepts, and explanations necessary to dispel the fog. Thunder and lightning have not become less frequent, weaker, or quieter since the time of Benjamin Franklin, but they inspire less fear—the same has since begun to happen to me with my own unreasonableness.
