An outstanding guide to nonsense for critical readers.
America is awash in lies, liars, and scams as well as books denouncing them, and this is among the best.
Simons, a professor of psychology, and Chabris, a cognitive scientist, are aware of the popularity of stories about scammers. In this collaboration, they deliver a steady stream of such tales in which the well known (Bernie Madoff, Elizabeth Holmes) barely scratch the surface. Mostly, scammers exploit habits that serve us well in daily life but make us easy prey. We believe what others tell us unless something seems fishy. We see what we expect to see. Without adequate critical thinking, it’s a formula for disaster. A respected psychology journal published a study in which subjects walking through dirty streets were more likely to think racist thoughts. Had the study—which turned out to be fake—reached the opposite conclusion, the editors might have paid more attention. We also tend to accept fascinating stories without question. Told that Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Mark Zuckerberg are college dropouts who became billionaires and then asked if dropouts are more likely to strike it rich, most subjects answer yes. In fact, nearly all billionaires are college graduates. The authors promote Ronald Reagan’s dictum about negotiating with the Soviet Union: “Trust, but verify.” Readers will agree but also admit that we readily distrust statements that contradict our beliefs and accept without question information we agree with. The authors present a delightful parade of fakery in which scammers compete with equally dishonest entrepreneurs, scientists, journalists, and politicians, with special attention to the psychologists. As to the “What We Can Do About It” in the title, Simons and Chabris prescribe easy, common-sense rules, not-so-easy-to-implement but excellent advice on researching dubious claims, and repeated warnings to question our deeply held beliefs and distrust gut feelings.
An outstanding guide to nonsense for critical readers.Pub Date: July 11, 2023
ISBN: 9781541602236
Page Count: 336
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: April 3, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023488
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
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