Irrationality 
Asiakaspalvelu Ratings: - Good read.. A very good book examining the irrational decisions people make. It also provides methods on how best to make a rational decision and not fall into the common traps. Learning statistics and probability theory are a start.
I did find it a little boring to read at times. The writing style is a little bland and technical in nature. Also, one thing the book only touched on was why people are irrational. Is it because of the way the brain works, or is it because of our schooling, society norms or culture?
For me, people are not purely rational machines that make Mr. Spock-like decisions. The brain is a very different machine to that of a computer. The brain is an excellent pattern recognition device. It s so good that it s able to find patterns where none exist. People are also ruled by past experiences and learning, emotions, values, instinct and desires. Any decision a person makes is clouded by all these things. It s incredible we can function at all let alone make a rational decision. - A Catalogue of Experiments. Despite the fantastic reviews and endorsements for this book, it seemed to me that each chapter seemed to follow the format of describing psychological experiments and their outcomes. Whilst interesting at first, the ideas and concepts became a little repetitive as the book went on - it could have been far shorter. Indeed, the author himself seemed to realise a lot of the experiments were not all that interesting and did not describe them in any detail!
On the plus side, one could learn about the way people think and interact in this book, but I cannot help but feel this could have been done in a more engaging way. - Caution - this book falls into many of the irrational traps it proports to show.. This book is worth reading even if you do not agree with its conclusion.
The book consists of demonstrating a number of logical flaws prevelent in human thought. Not all of the flaws are demonstrated as being true and the opinions of the author, although proporting to be rational, often fall foul of the very flaws he has just demonstrated. For this reason the book provides a cautionary tale of just how sneaky and prevalent irrational thinking is. The central flaw is that the author has obviously made up his mind as to the correctness of his opinion and consistantly fails to take into account alternative or unsuporting evidence. Do not expect a pros and cons argument as to whether or not a particular example is rational or irrational - even though he recommends the pros and cons method as one of the best ways to determine such things. He also falls victim to the halo effect - decribing The Great Randi as the world s leading magician (p228) is an easy example. The examples given in the book also unintentionally demonstate the availability error on numerous occasions.
However, although many of his examples are flawed - the explaination of the availablity error , halo effect, tendency to only look for supporting evidence is generally good and well worth knowing. He is particulary good at bringing attention to errors in the use of mathematical probabilty - many of which can have a significant detrimental effect on medicine and justice - for example he proves how a lie detector test with a 90% accuracy on a question can be far more likely to give a false positive than a true positive if the test subject comes from a largely honest (for that question) population. Such errors are worth knowing about and taking the time to understand.
The tone of the author can sometimes be intellectually elitist - more so than say Richard Dawkins. Many of the examples used can be seen to be political - in general the political examples tend to lean to the left in the first part of the book and to the right in the second part of the book - This is evidence of independent political thought.
It is in the chilling nature of it s conclusion that I most disagree with this book. Even though he tries to mitigate it s nature with disclaimers, the idea of the Unitisation of human life and abilities in order to make optimally rational decisions carries with it a degrading effect on the value of people as human beings. This degrading effect is probably far more evident today than in 1992 when the book was first published.
Overall this is a book well worth reading especially if, as the author points out, it will challenge your existing opinion. For the science however Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions is a far clearer and easier to understand book without the polemic and elitism although it does not cover every irrational error this book succesfully exposes or attempts to demonstrate.
- Fascinating and eyes-opening book!. A fascinating book!
Full with psychological experiments that keep your interest high throughout the book, this book offers a new perspection to the way you evaluate people s actions and reactions.
This book is succesful at conveying the thoughts of the writer, you could argue it is quite scientific in the sense that sometimes offers a deep analysis of the ideas, but not to the point that becomes tiring or too specialized. On the contrary, i think it achieves the perfect balance between enjoyable reading and a non-epidermic approach.
It is by no chance related to BAD SCIENCE, in fact some experiments are mentioned in both the books, though these books are a complementary to each other and in no way just same books in different version.
It analyses a lot of everyday actions, and how these actions have nothing to do with logic (rationallity). Why people become stubborn, why some people when presented with contrary to their beliefs arquments instead of changing their views become even more convinced for their believes etc, this book explores a variety of topics, that I personally found all to be extremely interesting.
In one word, i would say it teaches you how to filter what goes on around you, and become more objective with your surroundings. - Beware of cover puffs. Despite the glowing comments from Richard Dawkins and Oliver Sacks on the cover, I found Irrationality to be poorly written. In fact, although it s a fascinating subject, most chapters seemed to me to be a tedious catalogue of, in the main, experimental findings. The book s redeeming feature is the brief and witty summing-up (The Moral) at the end of each chapter.
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Irrationality (ID: 1905177070)
