Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

To save you the trouble of buying this book, I'll summarize its main points. 1. We don't know much at all. 2. We think we do. 3. Problems result. Oh, a few other things: 1. There's a community of knowledge. 2. By being a member of that community, we have access, in some ways to that knowledge, but access does not equal possession. However, we think it does. 3. Problems result. And finally. 1. People don't like lengthy explanations. 2. People like stories, false though they may be, and put great credence in them. 3. People seek causal explanations, but can use only those cause motivators with which they're familiar (hence gravity doesn't exist, but a rock thrown up loves the earth and seeks to return to it) 4. Experts opine on areas over which they have little expertise (like me, perhaps, here) 5. Ignorance = illusion = bliss until ... too late! And even then, who to blame? There's more, here and there, but really, the authors have provided us with a book replete with lengthy examples that are repetitive, and hide the fact that there is little original research, and less original thought here. It is just a rehashing of (largely well publicized already) behavioral science work from the last two decades. And not much of it - we have death by story/example. Of far greater interest might be such works as: Thaler's Nudge (which is referred to by the authors) Wilson's Strangers to Ourselves (about the adaptive unconscious) Ariely's Predictably Irrational (about mistakes we make, and make again) Surowiecki The Wisdom of Crowds (how groups are smart ... if not always smart!) These, but for the last, are about individual, not group decisions and behavior. And not about the fact that we don't know what we think we know. But they cover more material per page, and will result in a better "illusion of explanatory depth" for some of the ways we behave.