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The Little Book of Stupidity: How We Lie to Ourselves and Don't Believe Others
Are stupidity and sanity related? The truth may surprise you. We are all masters of self-delusion. Every day we make decisions that aren’t based on logic, but rather stories. Stories that we tell ourselves about who we are, what we want and why we want it. The Little Book of Stupidity is about these stories, Why you are always tricked into paying more How a piece of grilled-cheese sold for 28,000$ Why the legal system will always be flawed Why we can never save money Why we can’t end unhealthy relationships Why you are biologically wired to be judgmental How a statistician saved countless American lives The real secret behind “being lucky” Why you should stop watching the new immediately Why more choices don’t make you happier Best-selling author, Sia Mohajer, takes us on a journey through the statistics, experiments and psychology of stupidity to reveal one important fact – self-delusions are part of being human. You will emerge from this journey – wiser, more compassionate and with a better understanding of yourself. Get the Little Book of Stupidity now for a limited time price of 2.99.
99 pages, Kindle Edition
First published October 7, 2015
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
May 17, 2018
A fascinating read. A glimpse into what goes wrong with human reason occasionally. If 10% of this is true - we are biorobots. And there is a lot of work to do to improve our wetware.
Q:
It is not the reality of the situation that dictates an individual’s behavior but rather his constructed “subjective-social reality”. This is the cause of all manner of cognitive biases.
The most interesting part of Kahneman's findings were not how pervasive biases were but rather how adaptive they were. In many contexts, cognitive biases may lead to more effective actions. In situations where time is more important than accuracy, biases serve as powerful “rules of thumb”.
These “rules of thumb” were later called heuristics, or mental shortcuts. The resulting conclusion is powerful; cognitive biases are a natural result of human processing limitations resulting in limited information processing or, in many cases, lack of appropriate logic.
¬¬¬
This book is about the rift between reality and perception. In many ways, they exist as two separate entities only rarely skimming across the surface of each other. Why are they so distant? The reason is simple. You are a story. Your life is a story. Everything you do fits into that story. Within that story, we have a character.
“In critical moments, men sometimes see exactly what they wish to see.” Spock
Our subjective biases ensure that for as long as humans exist together, we will experience a lifetime of idiots, morons and stubborn people—each experiencing the same event and
interpreting it entirely differently.
Focusing on one aspect of any situation may entirely distort our perception. This bias is known as focalism and works in the same way as anchoring.
Focalism occurs when we get so caught up in trying to predict some future event that will determine our happiness that we fail to see our current reality. You can see this affect all the time and I'm sure after a few minutes of reflection, you can think of a decision which you initially thought would make you quite happy but, in fact, didn't. We are terrible predictors
of our future states of happiness or welfare.
When there is a plethora of information, we tend to latch onto the first piece of info for safety.
And remember, focalism or anchoring can also work in reverse. It can discourage us from doing tasks which may be extremely beneficial but have a perceived initial painful point of entry.
“Smart people believe weird things because they are skilled at defending beliefs they arrived at for non-smart reasons.” American author Michael Shermer
In another study6, it was found that questions are purposely constructed in ways that already support the hypothesis. This is often referred to as a positive test where the outcome is already predetermined by the question. You might have heard the term loaded question. This is exactly what this is. For example, asking someone “Have you stopped beating your
wife?” contains an implied conclusion that you were already beating her.
…
The people who were introduced as being introverted were asked questions such as “What do you find unpleasant about noisy parties?” However, people who were introduced as being extroverted were asked questions such as “How would you liven up a dull party?” The results naturally supported the initial assumption.
Schema theory or mental chunking is a theory in neuropsychology which states that information is stored and more easily matched when it fits into previously constructed mental models of reality.
We love winners. Winning is awesome. Winning is hard though and it's a lot of work. What is the next best thing to winning? Listening to stories about winning. Welcome to the survivorship bias.
The harder you work the luckier you get.” Gary Player
This is one of my favorite quotes. Sometimes though, regardless of how hard you work, you always seem to be unlucky. We all have times where several bad things happen to us and we feel extremely unlucky. Psychologist Richard Wiseman studied this phenomenon involving four hundred subjects from various backgrounds.31 The subjects were chosen after a newspaper ad was placed in a local paper asking for people who considered themselves to be either lucky or unlucky. Over the course of ten years, he requested participants to keep diaries, interviewed them and conducted various tests. In the most notable test, he asked subjects to count the number of photographs inside the newspaper. Self-labeled lucky and unlucky people had hugely different completion times. Lucky people took a few seconds whereas the unlucky people took two minutes. He later edited the newspaper and inserted a giant block of text on the second page that read, “Stop Counting. There are 43 photographs inside this newspaper.” This was followed by an equally large block of text on the follow page that read, “Stop counting, tell the experimenters you have seen this and win $250.” Surprisingly, the people who considered themselves unlucky missed BOTH!
You're probably asking yourself how this is possible. Wiseman concluded that “being lucky” is actually a pattern of behavior. It's basically our attitude towards random occurrences. More importantly, it’s that initial reaction when we experience something unexpected. Unlucky people crave the security that only a neat and tidy world can provide and as a result tend to be more anxious and narrowly focused. Lucky people just jump right in; they are open to whatever may happen. They aren’t as narrowly focused. The result is that lucky people just experience more events and in a wider variety than intrinsically more anxious people. Lucky people don’t require the same security and were attracted to new experiences. The more things you try, the higher your chances of encountering that one thing that really works. So, good luck or bad luck is the result of humans interacting with chance—some people are just better at it than others. (c)
Q:
It is not the reality of the situation that dictates an individual’s behavior but rather his constructed “subjective-social reality”. This is the cause of all manner of cognitive biases.
The most interesting part of Kahneman's findings were not how pervasive biases were but rather how adaptive they were. In many contexts, cognitive biases may lead to more effective actions. In situations where time is more important than accuracy, biases serve as powerful “rules of thumb”.
These “rules of thumb” were later called heuristics, or mental shortcuts. The resulting conclusion is powerful; cognitive biases are a natural result of human processing limitations resulting in limited information processing or, in many cases, lack of appropriate logic.
¬¬¬
This book is about the rift between reality and perception. In many ways, they exist as two separate entities only rarely skimming across the surface of each other. Why are they so distant? The reason is simple. You are a story. Your life is a story. Everything you do fits into that story. Within that story, we have a character.
“In critical moments, men sometimes see exactly what they wish to see.” Spock
Our subjective biases ensure that for as long as humans exist together, we will experience a lifetime of idiots, morons and stubborn people—each experiencing the same event and
interpreting it entirely differently.
Focusing on one aspect of any situation may entirely distort our perception. This bias is known as focalism and works in the same way as anchoring.
Focalism occurs when we get so caught up in trying to predict some future event that will determine our happiness that we fail to see our current reality. You can see this affect all the time and I'm sure after a few minutes of reflection, you can think of a decision which you initially thought would make you quite happy but, in fact, didn't. We are terrible predictors
of our future states of happiness or welfare.
When there is a plethora of information, we tend to latch onto the first piece of info for safety.
And remember, focalism or anchoring can also work in reverse. It can discourage us from doing tasks which may be extremely beneficial but have a perceived initial painful point of entry.
“Smart people believe weird things because they are skilled at defending beliefs they arrived at for non-smart reasons.” American author Michael Shermer
In another study6, it was found that questions are purposely constructed in ways that already support the hypothesis. This is often referred to as a positive test where the outcome is already predetermined by the question. You might have heard the term loaded question. This is exactly what this is. For example, asking someone “Have you stopped beating your
wife?” contains an implied conclusion that you were already beating her.
…
The people who were introduced as being introverted were asked questions such as “What do you find unpleasant about noisy parties?” However, people who were introduced as being extroverted were asked questions such as “How would you liven up a dull party?” The results naturally supported the initial assumption.
Schema theory or mental chunking is a theory in neuropsychology which states that information is stored and more easily matched when it fits into previously constructed mental models of reality.
We love winners. Winning is awesome. Winning is hard though and it's a lot of work. What is the next best thing to winning? Listening to stories about winning. Welcome to the survivorship bias.
The harder you work the luckier you get.” Gary Player
This is one of my favorite quotes. Sometimes though, regardless of how hard you work, you always seem to be unlucky. We all have times where several bad things happen to us and we feel extremely unlucky. Psychologist Richard Wiseman studied this phenomenon involving four hundred subjects from various backgrounds.31 The subjects were chosen after a newspaper ad was placed in a local paper asking for people who considered themselves to be either lucky or unlucky. Over the course of ten years, he requested participants to keep diaries, interviewed them and conducted various tests. In the most notable test, he asked subjects to count the number of photographs inside the newspaper. Self-labeled lucky and unlucky people had hugely different completion times. Lucky people took a few seconds whereas the unlucky people took two minutes. He later edited the newspaper and inserted a giant block of text on the second page that read, “Stop Counting. There are 43 photographs inside this newspaper.” This was followed by an equally large block of text on the follow page that read, “Stop counting, tell the experimenters you have seen this and win $250.” Surprisingly, the people who considered themselves unlucky missed BOTH!
You're probably asking yourself how this is possible. Wiseman concluded that “being lucky” is actually a pattern of behavior. It's basically our attitude towards random occurrences. More importantly, it’s that initial reaction when we experience something unexpected. Unlucky people crave the security that only a neat and tidy world can provide and as a result tend to be more anxious and narrowly focused. Lucky people just jump right in; they are open to whatever may happen. They aren’t as narrowly focused. The result is that lucky people just experience more events and in a wider variety than intrinsically more anxious people. Lucky people don’t require the same security and were attracted to new experiences. The more things you try, the higher your chances of encountering that one thing that really works. So, good luck or bad luck is the result of humans interacting with chance—some people are just better at it than others. (c)
March 11, 2019
Well, now. What do we have here? A neat little primer on what it means to be biased? Ten different means and ways we are biased with pretty decent descriptions about each?
Yep. That's about it.
Not included, unfortunately, is any trace of humor.
Why did I act on my bias that this might have been funny? Maybe it was the cover and the GREAT title for the text. It seemed PERFECT for a snarky little book on Logic and Self-Help with tons of tongue-in-cheek observations that could have been genuine, personal, and delightful.
Instead, we do get a SLIGHT taste of the personal and a rather abrupt zinger at the end letting us know that we're all pretty stupid and biases will always be with us.
Sure, it may be very true, but the way the author said it was completely without charm. Alas.
So, congratulations. You're biased. I know I was. I got this book based on a silly set of expectations that certainly didn't pan out.
I guess I learned a valuable lesson. The author is a genius.
Yep. That's about it.
Not included, unfortunately, is any trace of humor.
Why did I act on my bias that this might have been funny? Maybe it was the cover and the GREAT title for the text. It seemed PERFECT for a snarky little book on Logic and Self-Help with tons of tongue-in-cheek observations that could have been genuine, personal, and delightful.
Instead, we do get a SLIGHT taste of the personal and a rather abrupt zinger at the end letting us know that we're all pretty stupid and biases will always be with us.
Sure, it may be very true, but the way the author said it was completely without charm. Alas.
So, congratulations. You're biased. I know I was. I got this book based on a silly set of expectations that certainly didn't pan out.
I guess I learned a valuable lesson. The author is a genius.
June 26, 2016
Fan non-fiction?!
This is like a condensed summary of David McRaney's books, with bits of Kahneman, Ariely and Chabris thrown in. The content is superficial though, being derived as it is.
A reasonable starter if you're someone just setting out to explore cognitive biases. This book lists the 10 most common of them, in fairly simple and straightforward terms.
This is like a condensed summary of David McRaney's books, with bits of Kahneman, Ariely and Chabris thrown in. The content is superficial though, being derived as it is.
A reasonable starter if you're someone just setting out to explore cognitive biases. This book lists the 10 most common of them, in fairly simple and straightforward terms.
December 31, 2015
The Little Book of Stupidity takes a good look at how biased we can be and how unwilling we are to see the truth behind the lies we tell ourselves. The author introduces readers to ten of the most common cognitive biases that form our "stupid mentality." Although I'll admit I was mislead by the theme of the book as identifying people's actions as "stupid", once I started reading and could grasp the basic science behind the reasoning, it all started to make sense.
The author Sia Mohair has obviously done some research into this matter; although the science appears to be complex and would normally go over most peoples' heads [not because they are stupid] he breaks it down by introducing the topic with fun and interesting examples that keeps readers engaged. I'll admit I was totally unaware the important role that cognitive biases play in our decision-making processes.
The 10 Cognitive biases—Priceless!
The 1st cognitive bias is Anchoring: Our first encounter with a person generally determines how we view that person from then on. Our impression of him or her is anchored by the initial feeling or experience. The 2nd one is Cognitive Bias, and is one that anyone and everyone should be able to say, "Yes, that's me!" This is the bias that makes arguing with people really annoying because most people think they know what they are talking about. The problem is you also think you know what you are talking about.
The 3rd is Hyperbolic Bias: Delaying your desire and waiting for some future reward is a really difficult idea to sell to people. This is especially true given how uncertain the future may be. I'm sure the author was thinking of me when he wrote this. Actually, it would define most people when they know they should be doing one thing [saving money] but they do the opposite [spend it all]. Stupid? Quite possibly.
I won't outline the entire book for you but in a nutshell, the material here is brilliantly written; by that I mean, the ten cognitive biases are something that most people are aware of on a subconscious level, but rarely have the vision or discipline to recognize the moments when they are acting stupid. And by this it could be anything that takes place during the day when w attempt to justify insanity.
This book stands to be the first in what could be a series if the author decides to take it to the next level. There is definitely a powerful theme here involving the science and common logic that should be examined by everyone.
Well-written with powerful lessons that you can take home today "The Little Book of Stupidity" is a must-read! [even if you don't think you're stupid}
The author Sia Mohair has obviously done some research into this matter; although the science appears to be complex and would normally go over most peoples' heads [not because they are stupid] he breaks it down by introducing the topic with fun and interesting examples that keeps readers engaged. I'll admit I was totally unaware the important role that cognitive biases play in our decision-making processes.
The 10 Cognitive biases—Priceless!
The 1st cognitive bias is Anchoring: Our first encounter with a person generally determines how we view that person from then on. Our impression of him or her is anchored by the initial feeling or experience. The 2nd one is Cognitive Bias, and is one that anyone and everyone should be able to say, "Yes, that's me!" This is the bias that makes arguing with people really annoying because most people think they know what they are talking about. The problem is you also think you know what you are talking about.
The 3rd is Hyperbolic Bias: Delaying your desire and waiting for some future reward is a really difficult idea to sell to people. This is especially true given how uncertain the future may be. I'm sure the author was thinking of me when he wrote this. Actually, it would define most people when they know they should be doing one thing [saving money] but they do the opposite [spend it all]. Stupid? Quite possibly.
I won't outline the entire book for you but in a nutshell, the material here is brilliantly written; by that I mean, the ten cognitive biases are something that most people are aware of on a subconscious level, but rarely have the vision or discipline to recognize the moments when they are acting stupid. And by this it could be anything that takes place during the day when w attempt to justify insanity.
This book stands to be the first in what could be a series if the author decides to take it to the next level. There is definitely a powerful theme here involving the science and common logic that should be examined by everyone.
Well-written with powerful lessons that you can take home today "The Little Book of Stupidity" is a must-read! [even if you don't think you're stupid}
March 6, 2023
A book buddy randomly suggested this book, so I picked it up, and I wasn’t disappointed. This is a really short book that goes over different biases and heuristics that causes us to have flawed thinking. Sia Mohajer did a fantastic job keeping this book super short while also explaining everything extremely well and using real-life scenarios of where our thinking goes sideways.
What I loved about this book was he tosses in little quizzes for you to guess the bias, but even more so, I love how he talks a lot about having compassion for others. Not only do I read these books to help with my own thinking, but it helps me have more empathy for others when I get frustrated and upset at their irrationality. We’re all just human.
Anywho, if you want a short book that’s a great introduction to better thinking, this is the book for you.
What I loved about this book was he tosses in little quizzes for you to guess the bias, but even more so, I love how he talks a lot about having compassion for others. Not only do I read these books to help with my own thinking, but it helps me have more empathy for others when I get frustrated and upset at their irrationality. We’re all just human.
Anywho, if you want a short book that’s a great introduction to better thinking, this is the book for you.
May 1, 2020
This book is one of those "underrated" nonfictions.
Daniel Kahman's Thinking Fast and Slow enjoys many reviews, but this book is slightly marginalized. Surpiringly the concepts and themes of these two book are very connected, nonetheless that Mohajer's book was published when behavioral economic were in its infancy and not many researches were done on biases.
Daniel Kahman's Thinking Fast and Slow enjoys many reviews, but this book is slightly marginalized. Surpiringly the concepts and themes of these two book are very connected, nonetheless that Mohajer's book was published when behavioral economic were in its infancy and not many researches were done on biases.
June 5, 2020
I bought this book as it was referenced in a blog about critical thinking. I thought the author did a good job making the psychology of biases understandable for the most part. It had about a half dozen typos that didn't detract too much from the content. I think it is a good book for those that want to improve their critical thinking skills. BONUS: I finally know how stupid I am.
October 19, 2022
This would have been a one star book at best were it not for the top notch/informative content.
The book served to improve my self awareness of how I navigate planet Earth. Anchoring, Hyperbolic discounting and survivorship biases were my favorites.
The writing style? Mediocre, mediocre, mediocre :-)
The book served to improve my self awareness of how I navigate planet Earth. Anchoring, Hyperbolic discounting and survivorship biases were my favorites.
The writing style? Mediocre, mediocre, mediocre :-)
June 13, 2018
The author briefly covered 10 common biases innate in human, including confirmation bias, anchoring, Bias blind spot, Fundamental attribute error, hyperbolic discounting, Dunning Kruger bias, availability bias etc.
Good book for a newbie in the realm of cognitive bias.
Good book for a newbie in the realm of cognitive bias.
Want to read
July 11, 2020the little pdf
March 31, 2021
Pretty great intro to the cognitive bias of life.
May 17, 2022
كتاب صغير خالص -الأوديو ساعتين بس- عن المغالطات المنطقية وما يجعلنا كبشر أغبياء بشكل لا يمكن إنكاره
October 12, 2015
You're probably not as smart as you think you are.
This book provides keen insights into the workings of our minds. It details a lot of the current psychological research into the way we develop our biases.
If you're thinking that you are completely fair-minded and free of bias, this book will show you just how wrong you are and will explain the psychology behind why you would think that.
This book provides keen insights into the workings of our minds. It details a lot of the current psychological research into the way we develop our biases.
If you're thinking that you are completely fair-minded and free of bias, this book will show you just how wrong you are and will explain the psychology behind why you would think that.
December 20, 2016
An excellent book and short book. Sia focuses on ten biases we all have and how we should focus on recognizing and either acknowledging or fighting against our biases. Quit worrying about fixing everyone else, focus on yourself.
March 4, 2016
Good primer on cognitive bias.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews