Don't Believe Everything You Think: The 6 Basic Mistakes We Make in Thinking by Prometheus Books

	Title: Don't Believe Everything You Think: The 6 Basic Mistakes We Make in Thinking Purchase Item Manufacturer: Prometheus Books List Price: $19.00 Our Price: $7.75
Customer Reviews:
Don't Believe Everything You Think: The 6 Basic Mistakes We Make in Thinking by Prometheus Books Okay presentation of material - not the best
I think this book does a decent job organizing and giving example for categories of "mistakes in thinking." I have not test-driven it with one of my social psychology or cognitive psychology classes to see what our students think of it and how much they absorb from it (more important from my point of view). As a clinician, I was unimpressed with misinformed comments on the Rorschach and other projective tests. These days very few clinicians assume thematic face validity of people's responses to Rorschach card (i.e., seeing buttocks, female clothing, and indeterminate gender in ink blots means homosexual - p. 124). This sounds like a hold over from the days when homosexuality was a disorder listed in the DSM (approx. 1973). If people would like to run the Rorschach through its paces, they need to critique the Exner system of scoring responses rather than the presumption that the administrating clinician believe they can magically "read" and interpret someone's subconscious from their responses. I'm all for skepticism and sturdy criticism, but do it well and be informed. FYI - no clinician worth their salt utilizes any test in isolation or out of context, even tests that are well regarded as psychometrically sound.
Don't Believe Everything You Think: The 6 Basic Mistakes We Make in Thinking by Prometheus Books A way to rethink your thinking
I was looking for something to stir my thought process as lately we've been bombarded with a variety of viewpoints from a variety of sources (TV newspapers, blogs, etc etc etc). It was a good reminder on how to analyze information - without jumping to conclusions based on minimal evidence. I've found myself falling into that same trap a few times and being given viewpoints based on someone's personal experience or sound bites on television. We're constantly bombarded with snippets of information and "psuedo" science T.V. where only one side is presented or the entire background information is conveniently ignored. I've yet to complete the book, but thus far I've found it interesting and educating. Worth a read to remind oneself of traps we easily fall into when digesting information from our various sources.
Don't Believe Everything You Think: The 6 Basic Mistakes We Make in Thinking by Prometheus Books Regarding Pseudoscience, 2006:
One of my favorite quotes from this book: "why do we hold many pseudoscientific beliefs? Probably the main reason is that we want to believe them. As the noted astronomer Carl Sagan observed, pseudoscience and other weird beliefs often meet our emotional needs [...] we want simplicity in our lives, and belief in superstition, fate, the supernatural, and other pseudoscientific beliefs often provide simple explanations for life's events [p.040...] characteristics of pseudoscientific thinking: preconceived notion of what to believe, search for evidence to support a preconceived belief, ignore evidence that would falsify a claim or belief, disregard alternative explanations for a phenomenon, hold extraordinary beliefs, accept flimsy evidence to support an extraordinary claim, rely heavily on anecdotal evidence, lack of tightly controlled experiments to test a claim, employ very little skepticism [p.041]." -r.c.
Don't Believe Everything You Think: The 6 Basic Mistakes We Make in Thinking by Prometheus Books I Didn't Mean to Think THAT!
"of course that therapy works. Several of my friends had life-changing experiences from it." "I am betting on tails. Heads has come up too many times, so tails is due to come up soon." "See? My opinion is correct. These studies all back it up." In the first case, the speaker's mistake is to rely on testimonial and anecdote rather than statistic and research. The second speakers mistake is what is called the "gambler's fallacy" - the belief that the odds a seperate event is affected by the events that happened previously. The third speaker is making the mistake of seeking confirmation for her beliefs to support them, rather than to simulteneously keep an eye out for contrary data. These mistakes and more are amply exposed in this very entertaining and thought-provoking book devoted to - of course - detailing how our minds often lead us astray (and doubly so, because all the while, they fool us into believing that this is not happening!). Author Thomas Kida - a business professor specializing in analyzing the abstract art of decision making - takes us one by one through mistakes we tend to make in our thinking, filling each chapter with very interesting statistics and - GASP! - anecdotes to illustrate the point that even the mind which renders itself unassailable is often more prone to mistakes in thought than it might care to realize. (And far from being smug, he offers up several examples of how he engages in thought-mistakes without realizing it.) Some of the most interesting? Well, many of us don't realize, but we ALL engage in the error of confirmation bias - seeking to confirm theories and ideas we agree with rather than seeking to question by looking also for counterevidence. And it really is suprising how many of us fall for such numerical confusions as believing in the above gambler's fallacy, or the idea that our favorite sports team is going on a "hot streak." Similarly, the chapter detailing our tendency to discount the role of randomness in our lives - this is the chapter that touches on the 'gambler's fallacy' - was revealing. How many times have we "gotten lucky" at cards, and attributed our luck to fate rather than chance? How many lottery players do we know who refuse to let the lotto machine pick random mumbers, preferring to use their own "destined" numbers instead? Our reticence to acknkowledge how random life often is is even evident in the proliferation of stock brokers and weather reporters - both making a living by trying to "unrandomize" more-or-less random phenomenon. This book is as entertaining as it is eye-opening. It is filled with enough examples to keep you hooked. Of course, when all is said and done, the examples are a means towards an end, rather than an end in themselves. They are a means to - it is hoped - make us aware of the pitfalls of thought so that we might attempt to avoid some of them. I don't think it is an understatement to say that after reading this book, you will never look at gamblers, stock-brokers, faith healers, motivational speakers, statisticians, eye-witnesses in court cases or... yourself... in the same way again.
Don't Believe Everything You Think: The 6 Basic Mistakes We Make in Thinking by Prometheus Books Easy to read overview
I'm not completely sure what it is that I don't like about the style of writers for management. Maybe it's the insistence on the superficial, chatty, bouncy style of writing. Thomas Kida is a professor in the Isenberg School of Management and adopts this style, which somewhat undermines the very important points he makes. Yes, it's easy to read but I wouldn't mind a little more challenge in a book about the sometimes critical decision errors that we make due to our evolutionary past. The book is subtitle "the 6 basic mistakes..." - "the six pack of problems" as he calls them, which he lists in sequence. However, the majority of the book is not structured to follow that sequence. It seems to be rather an afterthought (or a good publicity idea). He readily admits that the book is built on the work of others and it really is. Much of the discussion on weird beliefs and pseudoscientific thinking is a rehash of Shermer and Sagan (and he credits them both). Having said that it does bring together a lot of different information and work by others and does explain how and why we all make these errors in reasoning. For a book on decision making, he goes too much into UFO's, false memories etc. His discussions on probability and why we misjudge is much more interesting and helpful. Overall, as I've said, it's an easy read and does cover a lot of interesting ground. However, it really doesn't bring much new for anyone who has read generally about these sorts of issues. A pretty good introduction but I just wish writers like this would credit their readers with a little more intelligence and literacy.
Don't Believe Everything You Think: The 6 Basic Mistakes We Make in Thinking by Prometheus Books Book Description
Do you believe that you can consistently beat the stock market if you put in the effort? —that some people have extrasensory perception? —that crime and drug abuse in America are on the rise? Many people hold one or more of these beliefs although research shows that they are not true. And it’s no wonder since advertising and some among the media promote these and many more questionable notions. Although our creative problem-solving capacity is what has made humans the successful species we are, our brains are prone to certain kinds of errors that only careful critical thinking can correct. This enlightening book discusses how to recognize faulty thinking and develop the necessary skills to become a more effective problem solver. Author Thomas Kida identifies "the six-pack of problems" that leads many of us unconsciously to accept false ideas: · We prefer stories to statistics. · We seek to confirm, not to question, our ideas. · We rarely appreciate the role of chance and coincidence in shaping events. · We sometimes misperceive the world around us. · We tend to oversimplify our thinking. · Our memories are often inaccurate. Kida vividly illustrates these tendencies with numerous examples that demonstrate how easily we can be fooled into believing something that isn’t true. In a complex society where success—in all facets of life—often requires the ability to evaluate the validity of many conflicting claims, the critical-thinking skills examined in this informative and engaging book will prove invaluable.