Rate this book

You Are Now Less Dumb: How To Conquer Mob Mentality, How To Buy Happiness, And All The Other Ways To Outsmart Yourself (2013)

by David McRaney(Favorite Author)

3.83 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

1592408052 (ISBN13: 9781592408054)

languge

English

genre

Nonfiction

publisher

Gotham

review 1: You Are Now Less Dumb (2014) by David McRaney is a book that shows that if you write a good enough first book many people will buy the second. If you're familiar with how we hyperbolically discount, the Dunning-Krueger effect, why your memory is faulty and 46 other ways you're deluding yourself from McRaney's excellent first book or his website then you'll be able to relive the experience. Either one of 'You are not so Smart' or 'You Are Now Less Dumb' is worth reading. Both are not.
review 2: David McRaney’s 2013 book “You Are Less Dumb” is a followup to his 2011 book “You Are Not So Smart,” which I read in March 2013. The theme of the books is self-delusion, an inevitable and everyday condition of all human beings. In my experience, few people rea... morelize, much less admit, they are self-deluded in some way, perhaps greatly so. As the gaining of knowledge is only possible after an admission of ignorance, so too only by realizing one is subject to self-delusions can the possibility exist to reduce the severity of those self-delusions. The more recent book by McRaney examines at greater length and more thoroughly many of the same facets of self-delusion of the book of two years before, relying on studies from psychology and cognitive science. There are 17 longer chapters in “You Are Less Dumb” rather than the 48 short chapters in “You Are Not Smart.” There are so many revelations in the book, I have the time and space to discuss only a few. In a chapter called “Narrative Bias,” McRaney points out that humans make sense of their lives through narratives, that is, telling stories to themselves to establish and maintain a self. “The day-to-day reality of your waking mental life makes sense because you turn events into stories and stories into memories and memories into chapters in the tale of your life.” The stories we tell ourselves give our lives structure, coherence, and meaning. But we must remember that these stories are, at best, oversimplifications and approximations of the reality of our lives – and, at worst, distortions and fabrications, giving our human histories a neatness and importance they probably don't possess. “Narratives are meaning transmitters. They are history-preserving devices. They create and maintain cultures, and they forge identities that emerge out of the malleable, imperfect memories of life events. It makes sense, then, that every aspect of humanity concerned with meaning, with cause and effect, will lean heavily on narrative. For instance, documentaries, books, and films about World War II present it as a story with a definite beginning and an end. In truth, nothing has a beginning and an end.” One aspect of narrative-generating was new to me. McRaney reports that this story-making by the brain continues even if one is near death. James Whinnery, a medical doctor for the U.S. Air Force, studied cases of hundreds of pilot blackouts – that is, oxygen-deprivation – over 30 years. “Over time, he has found striking similarities to the same sorts of things reported by patients who lost consciousness on operating tables, in car crashes, and after returning from other nonbreathing states. The tunnel, the white light, friends and family coming to greet you, memories zooming around – the pilots experienced all this. ... “As Whinnery and other researchers have speculated, the near-death and out-of-body phenomena are both actually the subjective experience of a brain-owner watching as his brain tries desperately to figure out what is happening and to orient itself amid its systems going haywire due to oxygen deprivation. … What the deoxygentated pilots don’t experience is a smeared mess of random images and thoughts. Even as the brain is dying, it refuses to stop generating a narrative, the scaffolding upon which it weaves cause and effect, memory and experience, feeling and cognition. Narrative is so important to survival that it is literally the last thing you give up before becoming a sack of meat.” These pilots, nearing the point of no return, i.e. death, and coming back, quickly reassemble themselves into the person they were before. A fascinating question we almost never ask ourselves is how effortlessly day after day, after long hours of sleep, we again become the “I,” the person we think we are, immediately after awakening. “Neuroscience isn’t certain how you reassemble your sense of self each time you wake up in the morning, but your personal narrative certainly has a lot to do with it.” When I bought McRaney’s first book, “You Are Not So Smart,” I remember taking it to the checkout counter at the local bookstore. The salesperson told me that she had started the book but couldn’t continue after a few pages. I obviously could not read her mind as to why, but I think I can speculate that the difficulty of trying to read a book that constantly challenges what you believe about your mental capabilities could wear down even ardent readers with high self-esteem. Nonetheless, I think it is wise to make the effort to understand what we can know and what we cannot, the ways we can be manipulated by advertising, pressures from crowds, and the lure of what appears to be true and is convenient to believe, in order to better know ourselves and the world we must navigate every day. Obviously, McRaney endorses the concept of skepticism, which does not mean not believing anything but rather evaluating new information and beliefs fairly and cautiously before either accepting or rejecting them. But he warns of “selective skepticism.” I think there are many people who consider themselves discerning and skeptical, who are in fact skeptics about some things but not others, who will quickly criticize other people’s inconsistencies and unexamined assumptions but not their own, which are defended to the death regardless of the merits of contrary evidence. Being a skeptic of everything – especially one’s own beliefs – what I would call being a radical skeptic, is the optimal attitude. Looking at the world today, I can make a good case that we have entered a new Age of Faith where for far too many people ideology and dogma trumps evidence, where ignorance is worn as a badge of merit, and where self-questioning is practiced less and less. Critically thinking about one’s basic beliefs is difficult, and not many want to take the time to do it more than occasionally in their lives. That this will change soon is doubtful. I have read several studies on belief, including several in this book, that say that contrary evidence, no matter how compelling and accurate, will not only not change most people's personal beliefs but paradoxically strengthen and harden those beliefs. McRaney thinks that citizens' truly listening, carefully reading, making an effort to understand, and honestly evaluating evidence contrary to their beliefs are necessary to the successful operation of any society. He sums up: “Every human effort should systematically pause and ask if it is currently mistaken.” To put this book's basic idea in a more popular context, we should recall San Francisco police detective Harry Callahan in the movie “Magnum Force,” who declared, “A man’s got to know his limitations.” less

Download links for: You Are Now Less Dumb: How to Conquer Mob Mentality, How to Buy Happiness, and All the Other Ways to Outsmart Yourself

Advertising