Content tagged with "critical-thinking"

The Art of Thinking Clearly
Book Review
May 29, 2016
382

this book has 99 chapters. that seems like a lot, but they’re quite short – some just 2-3 pages. each chapter discusses a cognitive fallacy or bias of some kind. things like: Survivor bias Confirmation bias Feature positive preference These are mental potholes that we fall prey to again and again,…

Calling Bullshit: The Art of Skepticism in a Data-Driven World
Book Review
August 31, 2020
83

A good examination of why people spit BS, and how to debunk it. It drifts into a standard list of cognitive fallacies and statistical mistakes somewhere in the middle. But still, it’s generally very good. The author makes a point that some people’s identity hinges on their BS , so they defend it…

The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure
Deane’s Library
Book Review
April 10, 2024
195

This is quite a good book about the “safe space” concept, mostly at universities. It’s very similar to The Parasitic Mind or The Constitution of Knowledge. It fights back against three “untruths”: They do a little cherry-picking of liberal weirdness on the fringes. They go deep, for example, into…

The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth
Deane’s Library
Book Review
September 22, 2022
277

This is a polemic against misinformation. It was written post-Trump, and Trump informs and motivates a lot of it. The author is retaliating against what he sees as the basic corruption of truth. We’ve arrived at a point in society where we can simply deny any truth that we don’t like and limit…

Crimes Against Logic: Exposing the Bogus Arguments of Politicians, Priests, Journalists, and Other Serial Offenders
Deane’s Library
Book Review
December 28, 2015
193

This is a nice little introduction of logical fallacies, with examples of how we encounter them in real life. Each chapter is an introduction to a category of fallacies, and then it’s further broken down into specifics. The author covers things like Post Hoc fallacies, refutation by reputation, ad…

The Decision Book: Fifty Models for Strategic Thinking
Deane’s Library
Book Review
March 14, 2014
200

I abandoned this book, but not by choice – truth is, I lost it about 2/3s of the way through . The book was…okay. True to the tag line, it presents a series of thought models with which to evaluate decisions. Some I had heard of and some were new. Some seemed valuable, others didn’t seem like they…

Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle
Deane’s Library
Book Review
January 13, 2023
171

This is a book about how we don’t like reality anymore. We like the illusion of reality. As a society, we’re addicted to farce. It’s almost hilarious that this was written in 2009. If only the author had seen what was coming. He talks about “the illusion of literacy,” by contrasting it against…

An Illustrated Book of Bad Arguments
Deane’s Library
Book Review
December 4, 2023
172

This is a…cute, book. That’s the only way I can really characterize it. It’s a small book. Every two-page spread represents one or more logical fallacies. The left page is a description, and the right page is a drawing meant to illustrate the fallacy. The drawings are of anthropomorphized animals….

The Intelligence Trap: Why Smart People Make Dumb Mistakes
Deane’s Library
Book Review
October 16, 2021
235

A book about how smart people are sometimes very stupid. Sometimes, we can be so smart and analytical that we outsmart ourselves, lose sight of the forest for the trees, and come full-circle back to stupid. One example is Arthur Conan-Doyle, the nominally brilliant author of Sherlock Holmes. He was…

Mindhacker: 60 Tips, Tricks, and Games to Take Your Mind to the Next Level
Deane’s Library
Book Review
July 8, 2020
195

It delivers on the title – the book is a description of 60 habits and mind exercises you can do to get smarter. It’s okay. Some of the chapters are really drawn-out/padded, and the authors go down really esoteric rabbit holes sometimes – there’s a weirdly long chapter in there about 4D…

The Model Thinker: What You Need to Know to Make Data Work for You
Deane’s Library
Book Review
May 23, 2023
416

This is literally a textbook – the author says much at the beginning. He’s a professor at the University of Michigan, and he writes about how a friend asked him to resurrect a course on statistical modeling. That course became this book. Models are ways of thinking and analyzing a subject. It’s a…

The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload
Deane’s Library
Book Review
December 22, 2015
170

I enjoyed this book, but understand that it’s not a simple book of techniques or direction. The author goes deep into the human mind – the swear, the first chapter is a lesson in neurological anatomy. You’ll read more about the human brain than you probably care to know. The book is interesting, but…

The Parasitic Mind: How Infectious Ideas Are Killing Common Sense
Deane’s Library
Book Review
November 1, 2023
547

The author of this book is very angry about misconceptions that people have and the fact that they continue to have them. He comes down pretty squarely on the political Right, but he never actually articulates a political position. He’s furious about “political correctness.” He’s also not a fan of…

The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind
Deane’s Library
Book Review
October 4, 2023
203

This book caused quite a stir when it was published in 1994. This is the quote that upset a lot of people: The scandal of the evangelical mind is that there isn’t one. The author was basically saying that evangelical Christians have stopped thinking rationally about anything. Unfortunately, it was a…

The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don’t
Deane’s Library
Book Review
June 28, 2022
300

At first, I didn’t like this book, but it won me over in the end. At its heart, it’s about confirmation bias – how we defend our positions by acknowledge evidence in favor of them and ignoring or downplaying evidence against them. Galef calls this “the soldier mindset,” because we’re always…

Super Thinking: The Big Book of Mental Models
Deane’s Library
Book Review
August 27, 2019
64

Neat book full of mental models from all domains. It’s well-written, and will expose you to a lot of things you sort of now, but haven’t quite articulated. The only downside is that it doesn’t go too deep, but that’s not really the intention.

Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction
Deane’s Library
Book Review
May 22, 2017
57

Highly readable discussion about how hard it is to predict the future, and all the cognitive traps we fall into when we try to do so. Includes a handy list of Ten Commandments of Super Forecasting.

The Thinker’s Toolkit: 14 Powerful Techniques for Problem Solving
Deane’s Library
Book Review
June 16, 2018
207

This book should have been called, “How to Make Decisions,” as this is basically what it is – a series of frameworks for making decisions. The first chapter has some business fiction – a company is arguing about whether or not to purchase a new delivery truck. I normally hate business fiction, and…

Why We Make Mistakes: How We Look Without Seeing, Forget Things in Seconds, and Are All Pretty Sure We Are Way Above Average
Deane’s Library
Book Review
June 30, 2019
76

Another book about behavioral science and social psychology. It’s an entertaining read, but doesn’t really break new ground. It’s basically a bunch of chapter of themes, each of which is a bunch of anecdotes stacked on each other, a la Gladwell.

You Are Not So Smart: Why You Have Too Many Friends on Facebook, Why Your Memory Is Mostly Fiction, and 46 Other Ways You’re Deluding Yourself
Deane’s Library
Book Review
August 31, 2017
71

A solid review of the standard logical fallacies that people fall for again and again. Each chapter covers one, and they’re short and well-explained. Weirdly profane, which seemed a little out of place.