You Are Not So Smart: Why You Have Too Many Friends on Facebook, Why Your Memory Is Mostly Fiction, an d 46 Other Ways You're Deluding Yourself

The first problem with this book is that it needs you to not be smart, so it just casts you in that role. Every chapter consists of the author overstating an assumption and then rebutting that overstated assumption (one might call it a strawman).

The "logical fallacies" themselves are given total reign. It's not that you sometimes allow brand loyalty to influence you. No, you're just dumb and every choice you make is because of brand loyalty. There are never any meaningful coincidences ... it's always apophenia. You never analyze and understand your motives. It's always hindsight bias or confabulation. Et cetera. You aren't given these terms and warned to look out for them. Everything can be explained by them! Because you're stupid!

The only time any qualification is given, any statement that "this might not always be the case", is in the argument from authority section. Why? Because the author is presenting himself as an authority. If he used the same method to present this section you might dismiss him. So here he is careful to say "if the person is speaking about his area of expertise, he's probably worth listening to". Then he makes a dumb comparison - the book is full of dumb comparisons and examples that I suppose are meant to be funny, like his occasional use of profanity - and says that you shouldn't listen to your history professor about, say, the endemic quality of Spice Girls music. Hahahaha!

Worse, he then contradicts himself. Because he considers science irreproachable, he then attempts to argue that if a "consensus" of scientists believe something it's probably true (argumentum ad populum anyone?). And if has been peer reviewed, why, you're just a dumb ol' rube if you question it! This is said right after he relates the story of the creator of the lobotomy being lauded (he received the Nobel Prize!) for using an ice pick to destroy the brain of people with behavioral disorders.

I gave up on this childish book in the "strawman fallacy" section, in which the author conflates strawmen with slippery slopes and claims both are always fallacies. Even the Wikipedia page for "slippery slope" takes care to state that such arguments are not always fallacies.

So, just look at the table of contents and then go to Wikipedia. You'll be spared the condescending attitude, the lame jokes, and the childish profanity.

Any book in which the title is an insult is going to draw my interest.

Over the past few years, I have been fascinated by behavioral economics. I have read many books either by Kahneman and Tversky and I have read many books that dive into studies on human behavior inspired
by Kahneman and Tversky. Almost all the books I have read have been fascinating and McRaney’s book is no exception.

I would consider this book a great introduction to human behavior studies. Each chapter is short and to the point. Each chapter gives clear examples of how our bias and blind spots impact our everyday life.

If you are looking for something more in-depth find books by Kahneman or Thaler.

The human mind is a wonderful thing. This is basically a collection of fallacies we hold as humans. It is a chapter book but the chapters aren't connected. Good for reading in segments.

This book is like an elementary psychology one book. The findings are questionable, the research not the best. I was underwhelmed.

Cut to the Chase:
This book is probably fine for readers who have very little background in human psychology, but if you’ve ever read anything else on the topic, it’s likely to be repeated here. The chapters, though numerous, are extremely short and give a very superficial treatment to common cognitive errors and logical fallacies. If this is your first encounter with the subject material, you will likely find this to be an entertaining and interesting overview. If, on the other hand, you already know anything at all about these topics, you will find this book to be a frustrating repetition of snippets you have seen or heard elsewhere. There’s nothing new here, but McRaney has an engaging style and a great knack for humor, so this has the potential to be a great read for the right audience… that just wasn’t me.

Greater Detail:
This book covers the common errors in thinking in a series of short chapters. Topics include biases (confirmation bias, hindsight bias), logical fallacies (argument from authority, straw man fallacy), quirks of human psychology (Dunbar’s number, responses to the ultimatum game), behavior patterns (social loafing, learned helplessness) and more. Each is covered with a few pages, so if you know what these things are, you’re not likely to learn much about them (if you know one example of, say, the anchoring effect, odds are it’s the one included here). If you don’t, this is a great overview with lots of entertaining anecdotes and almost no scientific jargon. This book is all about breadth over depth, and it does breadth pretty well. An example is the Texas sharpshooter fallacy: a man shoots at a barn for 10 minutes, then walks over to the barn and paints a target over the area with the most holes, making it look like he’s a good shot. This illustrates the human tendency to see patterns in random events; “randomly distributed” is not the same as, and is in fact not compatible with, “evenly distributed.”

Almost every chapter ends with something like, “If you think x, y, z, then you are not so smart.” Yes, I get it, it’s the title of the book, but by chapter 48 this gets quite wearisome. If I wanted to be insulted every couple of pages, I’d read something political. This is a minor gripe, though.

Personally, I got a bit bored reading this and had to force myself through to the end, thus the less-than-stellar rating. I worry, though, that I’m being unfair; I’ve read LOTS of books on these topics, and I think this one was hurt by being read last. I don’t think it’s actually worse than others I’ve read, and I suspect it wouldn’t feel repetitive to a reader who is new to the topic. The writing style is engaging and accessible, the wit is dry, and the examples and anecdotes are engaging and entertaining.

Comparisons to Other Authors:
This is a bit like a CliffsNotes version of Dan Ariely’s Predictably Irrational, which is the depth-over-breadth version. If you’ve already read that, then skip this one, whether you liked Ariely’s book or not. If you read this and want to learn more, though, then you might give Predictably Irrational and its followup, The Upside of Irrationality, a try.

Some interesting biases, fallacies, etc. that demonstrate why we aren't as smart as we'd like to think we are. Instead of just describing all of these challenges, though, I wish the author had given suggestions as to how we can overcome them.

Why do people act like idiots? what was that person thinking when they did that? Did you ever wonder why people jump to conclusions without all the facts? or make assumptions about people they just met? or why you think you are slightly smarter than everyone else?

This book sites research and studies to show us what is behind our actions at times. It is a concise collection showing 48 well known and obscure psychology studies and points of view in a few easy to read pages. It is easy to pick up and put down with short chapters so you can leave it around and pick it up when you have time. I had many Ahhh ha moments where I thought this is good insight.

Very enlightening thought debunker.

Even though The material in this book is covered in various ohter books, and much was not new to me, I think that the material written here is not known enough, and that the book presents it with great clarity. I hoped for more references to research, but at least in many cases the author mentions the names of the researchers, so that it is possible to track down the research articles themselves.
The book is about our biases, and the way we distort the reality.

What a fun book to read. I was pleasantly surprised at how relatable the examples are presented. Even more surprising is that I felt this book is highly useful and relevant to an individual going through a substance misuse recovery process. I’m sure this was not the intent by the author, but there are more REAL LIFE ideas and applications in this book than I have read in traditional recovery books. A great read to tantalize the mind. Now I just wish that I are am wasn’t as dumb as I now know I are. After reading this book I can at least laugh at my own foolishness.