PDF / EPUB File Name: The_Art_of_Thinking_Clearly_-_Rolf_Dobelli.pdf, The_Art_of_Thinking_Clearly_-_Rolf_Dobelli.epub Have you ever thought about why people at casinos throw their dice harder if they want a high number, and gently if they need a low one to win big? One more thing if you decide to get the book: You don’t have to read the book from start to finish. Jump around. Read the thinking concepts you find most intriguing. The sections of the book aren’t connected to each other. Your brain is evolutionarily wired with shortcut ways to help you survive. Unfortunately, these psychological tendencies don’t serve us well now that we don’t have to avoid being eaten by a lion every day. Similarly, research has shown that 93 percent of US students ranked themselves as “above-average” drivers, and 68 percent of University of Nebraska faculty ranked their own teaching abilities in the top quartile.

It is not what you say, but how you say, that's important. 98% Fat Free product seems more healthy than a product with 1% Fat. A world-class thinker counts the 100 ways in which humans behave irrationally, showing us what we can do to recognize and minimize these “thinking errors” to make better decisions and have a better life You can then think how to apply them to areas of your life that could be improved. I used them to think more clearly about my creative output, both with my camera and on this blog. Not only that, but we also mistakenly attribute successes to our own abilities and failures to external factors. The “behavioral turn” in neuroscience and economics in the past twenty years has increased our understanding of how we think and how we make decisions. It shows how systematic errors mar our thinking and under which conditions our thought processes work best and worst. Evolutionary psychology delivers convincing theories about why our thinking is, in fact, marred. The neurosciences can pinpoint with increasing precision what exactly happens when we think clearly and when we don’t.

Dobelli’s goal is to learn to recognize and evade the biggest errors in thinking. In so doing, he believes we might “experience a leap in prosperity. We need no extra cunning, no new ideas, no unnecessary gadgets, no frantic hyperactivity—all we need is less irrationality.” And if you lead a group, appoint someone as devil's advocate. He or she will not be the most popular member of the team, but definitely the most important. Ambiguity aversion: With everything else being equal, the scale will tilt towards what’s familiar. Even if there is risk involved, you’ll choose to take your chances rather than trying something new, something unfamiliar. The ambiguity aversion thinking error explains that we prefer taking risks with familiar things, even if the new, foreign strategy can lead to much better results.

One study identified just how much hope the illusion of control can provide. Researchers divided participants into two booths. In each booth, sound increased until the subjects told the researchers to stop. The difference was that one had a red “panic” button that participants could press when the noise became too loud. Even though the button didn’t do anything at all, the people with a button in their booth withstood much more noise than those without a button. You’re probably a rational person, right? You’re probably pretty good at assessing your own abilities, too. Unfortunately, this is pretty unlikely! But don’t worry, you’re in good company: we are all far less rational and far more capricious in our decision-making than we believe ourselves to be. Our brains are designed to reproduce rather than search for the truth. In other words, we use our thoughts primarily to persuade. Whoever convinces others secures power and thus access to resources.” Rolf DobelliEffort justification. If we work hard for something, or suffer for it, we value it much more. This is one of the reasons hazing and initiation rituals are so prevalent in groups: the pain you go through to join the group makes you value the group much more. This also explains the "Ikea Effect," where customers value their Ikea furniture more because of the effort they had to put in to assemble it. And this also partially explains the "not invented here" syndrome, where companies prefer their internal, home-spun solutions, simply because they took part in building them, and not because those solutions are actually better than the alternatives.

Strategic misrepresentation: People lie in interviews. People will tell you what you want to hear to get the deal. Hell, people even lease sports cars to signal to others that they are successful. Everyone is trying to sound and look better than they really are. This is normal for us, humans. But this is something you need to consider when negotiating a deal. Everything I do and what I learn along the way gets shared on here, to inform and inspire you to get out and shoot as much - and as well - as you can too. I’ve already spent so many hours, so much money, and energy on this project. I can’t let it go now.’ We prefer taking risks with something familiar rather than trying something new because of uncertainty. How did you come to your decision? A truly rational approach would be to separately consider both the advantages and disadvantages of genetically modified foods: first, assess each “pro” in terms of importance, and then multiply each by the probability that those advantages will actually occur. Then, do the same with each “con.”Fend it off ( availability bias) by spending time with people who think different than you do—people whose experiences and expertise are different from yours. Guard Against Chauffeur Knowledge This is a comprehensive summary of the book The Art of Thinking Clearly by Rolf Dobelli. Covering the key ideas and proposing practical ways for achieving what’s mentioned in the text. Written by book fanatic and online librarian Ivaylo Durmonski. Salience effect: We tend to focus on the most obvious things in a situation. If a book is successful, we might say that it’s thanks to the marvelous cover. If you hear about a car crash and recently there was also a report about drunk drivers, you’ll conclude that the new event was also caused by irresponsible drinking. We focus on the sensational news rather than digging deeper to grasp the whole picture.