This book had a lot of interesting ideas but I was disappointed how few were new to me.
The authors should have stayed in their engineering & math lanes since they didn’t understand several of the psychology topics as well as they thought they did, hence ” a Bit Arrogant “.
The one example ( of about 6 -10 they understood poorly / oversimplified ) was their description of ” Availability Bias “. They understood it superficially as they said something like ” Availability Bias is when recent knowledge is easier to access… ”
It’s often true, but shows their shallow understanding of most of the topics around psychology. Availability bias has NOTHING specifically to do with how recently you learned or thought about something. It’s more obvious in the name, but subtle in understanding. It’s one’s bias to overweight the impact or importance of the most available information when making decisions. While it’s true that recently learned or considered information is often more available because of its recency, it’s the AVAILABILITY bias, NOT a RECENCY bias.
While recent information is available, so is ANYTHING the you know well, regardless of how recently you last learn or though about it.
A perfect example is my criticism of them misrepresenting / misunderstanding what Availability bias actually is.
I have a BSc. in psychology & have been learning about many areas of psychology, including cognitive biases for probably 30 plus years. Knowledge about cognitive biases his very AVAILABLE to me even regardless of whether I’ve thought about or learned it recently. AVAILABLE knowledges is NOT necessarily RECENT.
The authors committed thwe same sins with quite a few of the psychological topics because of a bias we’re ALL subject to, the overconfidence bias & Dunning–KrugerEffect.
The overconfidence bias is just like it sounds. People tend overestimate their own level of skill or knowledge compared to others & reality.
The Dunning–Kruger Effect is related, but not the same. Ironically, this book taught me nuances about the Dunning–Kruger Effect I wasn’t aware of.
The Dunning–Kruger Effect is a confidence curve where amatures are initially overconfident about their skill or understanding of a topic. As they learn more, they become aware of what they don’t know. As that happens, their confidence declines from their initial & unrealistic overconfidence declines to a more objective & realistic level of confidence.
The authors, which if I recall correctly, were both engineers from prestigious schools like M.I.T. which likely contributed to their overconfidence & early stage Dunning–Kruger Effect about topics they understood superficially.
To be fair, this is a good book in which most of what they say is correct & insightful around topics they understood better than I. They should have stayed in their lane, or gained deeper understanding before writing on topics they didn’t understand as well as thought they did. Anybody not knowing those topics wouldn’t have noticed their ignorance or oversimplification of them.
My second criticism is that they misunderstood virtually all of Robert Cialdini’s levers of influence & so should have omited them from their book.
Overall, a good book with lots of good mental models, but they are overconfident in their understanding of psychology & present common sense as mental models they are bestowing upon you 😕
tim #bgreen🌏