Books › You are not so smart
You are not so smart
320 pages
A playful, humbling tour through the cognitive biases that secretly run your life, proving that you are delightfully, predictably irrational.
What it feels like
Reading this book feels like sitting down with a wickedly smart, slightly sarcastic friend who is determined to lovingly dismantle your ego. It moves at a brisk, addictive clip, structured in bite-sized chapters that make it dangerously easy to keep reading just one more. The tone is wry and conversational, stripping away the dry jargon of academic psychology to reveal the hilarious, humbling reality of how our brains actually work. You will find yourself laughing in recognition as it exposes the invisible biases and logical fallacies that dictate your daily choices. It is the perfect read for curious skeptics and armchair philosophers who enjoy having their worldview tilted on its axis, leaving you with a profound, amused appreciation for the messy, irrational reality of being human.
- Mood
- playful
- eye-opening
- humbling
- intellectually stimulating
- Tone
- wry
- conversational
- humorous
- irreverent
- informative
- Pace
- brisk
- Themes
- cognitive biases · human irrationality · self-deception · the illusion of logic · everyday psychology
- The writing
- Punchy, accessible, and conversational, stripping away academic jargon in favor of relatable anecdotes and sharp wit.
- The arc
- Moves from confident assumptions about one's own logic to a humbled, amused acceptance of human fallibility.
- Who it's for
- Curious minds who enjoy having their assumptions challenged and appreciate a good-natured roasting of human intelligence.
About the book
An entertaining illumination of the stupid beliefs that make us feel wise, based on the popular blog of the same name.
Whether you’re deciding which smartphone 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. You’re just as deluded as the rest of us—but that’s okay, because being deluded is part of being human.
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. 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.
Bringing together popular science and psychology with humor and wit, You Are Not So Smart is a celebration of our irrational, thoroughly human behavior.
Description from Open Library.
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