The Art of Thinking Clearly – Rolf Dobelli - Review

Cognitive error is a failure to think clearly under various conditions which is widespread amongst learned, intellectual or regular section of people. Rolf Dobelli has elucidated 99 of such scenarios wherein irrational side of human behaviour is exhibited. There isn’t a specific flow to the narrative but the idea is around picking different scenarios wherein we are easily lead to an irrational decision.

I have highlighted a bunch of interesting bias

Survivorship Bias – People overestimate the chance of success and negate super significant failure rate. Setting out to become movie stars, starting a new firm or path towards national team selection has a significant error in misjudgment on their chance of succeeding. The failure rate of start up is 90% and 10% of them don't even survive a single year in business.

External Illusion – Models are signed up for cosmetics ads because they score highly on beauty aspect and didn’t attain the same through cosmetics. However, the viewers are influenced to buy cosmetics by subconsciously equating cosmetics to beauty and models are used to misguide the consumers.

Herd Behaviour – When the majority in a group call out a wrong answer the minor segment is bound to suspects his right answer and aligns with the wrong answer. Solomon Asch’ conformity experiment showcases the same in ideal fashion.

(178) Asch Conformity Experiment - YouTube

Confirmation Bias – It’s a behaviour pattern wherein contradicting evidences are rejected while only conforming points are looked upon. A dangerous form of it evokes when a designated police officer forms a theory during the initial stages of investigation which leads him to pick only evidence that supports his theory and rejects disconfirming facts.

Authority Bias – Basically a framework in which subordinates are scared to voice out their opinion against superiors even when they were right. I believe such a bias is common across many companies and governments. Such bias in airline industry can be fatal if there is an error in judgement or oversight arises from the Captain. Airlines have formulated a strategy by forming Crew Resource Management (CRM) and co-pilots are coached to express their reservations without the fear of being reprimanded. Needless to say that CRM has prevented many accidents than technical advancements over the years.

Availability Bias – We tend to draw an incorrect picture based on information that’s readily available instead of picking all the pieces of the puzzle to get the right image. Such biases are common amongst various news channels who conduct media trial based on instantly available information while the courts remain inconclusive even after listening to arguments for years together.

Chauffeur knowledge – The terminology is derived from the story of Max Planck, noble prize winner in 1918 for quantum mechanics and his chauffeur. Having heard Max Planck’s speech in quantum mechanics many times, the chauffeur offered to replicate the same speech to a different audience in the disguise as Max himself. Both swapped their positions in the car and to Max’s surprise the chauffeur delivered an impeccable speech on quantum mechanics by absolutely replicating the verbatim. When someone from the audience asked a question, he smirked at the person and pointed towards Max claiming that even his chauffeur can answer it. Though the incident happens to be interesting, the fundamental point is that a whole lot of people get away with superficial knowledge just by virtue of prepared script.

On the whole Rolf has delivered an outstanding book on psychology and is worth reading multiple times.