Mindware: Tools for Smart Thinking Paperback – August 2, 2016
Author: Richard E. Nisbett ID: 0374536244
Review
The most influential thinker, in my life, has been Richard Nisbett. — Malcolm Gladwell New York Times Book Review
About the Author
Richard E. Nisbett is a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan and one of the world’s most respected psychologists. He has been awarded the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award of the American Psychology Association, the William James Fellow Award for Distinguished Scientific Achievements, and the Donald T. Campbell Award for Distinguished Research in Social Psychology, among others. His books The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently . . . and Why and Intelligence and How to Get It: Why Schools and Cultures Count have won multiple awards and been translated into more than ten languages.
Paperback: 336 pagesPublisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (August 2, 2016)Language: EnglishISBN-10: 0374536244ISBN-13: 978-0374536244 Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.8 x 0.7 inches Shipping Weight: 12.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies) Best Sellers Rank: #217,893 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #178 in Books > Medical Books > Psychology > Applied Psychology #448 in Books > Health, Fitness & Dieting > Psychology & Counseling > Applied Psychology #508 in Books > Medical Books > Psychology > Social Psychology & Interactions
In this excellent and practical book the prominent psychologist, Richard Nisbett, translates psychological research into practical advice that will help the reader to better evaluate situations and to make better decisions. The book is in many ways similar to Kahneman’s book “Thinking fast and slow”, in that it explains where our reasoning, deductions and inferences tend to go wrong. However, Nisbett takes the extra step of trying to formulate simple laws that one can follow to avoid the psychological pitfalls that people often fall into. In some cases this merely means being aware that there is such a pitfall, which according to Nisbett actually helps a great deal. For example, if we are aware of our instinctual tendency to rate anecdotal evidence higher than experimental evidence, we can make a conscious effort downplay anecdotal evidence. Similarly, even if no one uses decision theory (listing pros and cons for all alternatives we are faced with) perfectly, knowing the basics will actually help us make slightly better decisions on average.
One of the more notable aspects of modern society is that we are constantly being bombarded with information and commercials. A good chunk of this book is dedicated to deciphering findings reported in the media. For example, we should be very skeptical of correlations, because correlation does not equal causation. If obese children tend to have parents that controls the child’s food intake, that does not mean that controlling your child’s food intake will make them obese. A more likely explanation is that when a child becomes obese, parents will want to control food intake. A huge number of similar findings are reported in the media on a daily basis.
This book really had me captivated all the way through. I find psychology to be very interesting. The book is about the limitations and shortcomings of our thinking, and how we are generally unaware of just how shaky our everyday conclusions are. The book goes into detail about the split between our conscious and unconscious processing of events, and how much of what is behind the scenes in the formation of our perceptions is unavailable to us. In the later chapters you get a nice "course" on statistics and and great information on theories of logic. These serve as a contrast to the overconfident and less than rational methods of thought most of us are prone to. I say "course" on statistics because this is nothing like the torture you may have endured or would have anticipated from a college course on statistics (I happen to enjoy statistics but I march to the beat of my own drum). Instead, you get a very easily understandable explanation of how claims like "people who have larger wedding ceremonies are more likely to stay married" are not what they’re sometimes cracked up to be (namely that even if that statement is true, it does not necessarily mean that having a large ceremony will improve your chances of staying married longer. It may be that the people who have larger ceremonies do so because they have more money, and therefore have less fights over finances, and/or less stress, and/or better access to counseling services. The name given to this notion is "correlation does not equal causation").
To sum it up, this book looks at human thought, it various pitfalls, and ways to improve it from several angles. If you’ve read Thinking…
Malcolm Gladwell thinks that Mindware’s author Richard Nisbett has been the most influential thinker in his life, who gave him his view of the world. High praise indeed. Harvard professor Daniel Gilbert was almost as effusive in his blurb. So too NYU professor Jonathan Haidt and Stanford professor Carol Dweck. I don’t always give a lot of credence to blurbs, but in this case my expectations were very high.
I was a little disappointed. Richard Nisbett does broadly survey the field of psychology to collect interesting ideas on how to think smarter. But these ideas are not really practical tools. And his book seems to be loosely organized with anecdotes and studies mixed up together in a bit of hodge-podge. For me at least, there’s no clear message from the book. It was entertaining, but that was all.
One problem is that Richard Nisbett relies heavily on anecdotes and quotations to support his points, even though that kind of thing seems more impressive than it is. For example, he cites the example of Barack Obama being interviewed at Google by Eric Schmidt and answering a difficult computer science question correctly, thus amazing Eric Schmidt and all the Google employees in the audience. He should have mentioned, though, that Eric Schmidt had asked John McCain the same question a short time before, and Barack Obama’s campaign staff had prepared him to give the right answer — one that he simply parroted with no idea of what it meant.
That happens too much throughout the book. Another example is Richard Nisbett’s criticism of Ford for the design of its Pinto gas tank, which he says was a cold calculation that improving the design would cost $175 million and staying with the same design and paying for deaths would be cheaper at $45 million.
Editions of Mindware Tools for Smart Thinking by Editions for Mindware Tools for Smart Thinking 0385680996 Mindware Editions expand details by Richard E Nisbett First published August 18th 2015UM Events Date Saturday November 8 2014 Time 1 00pm Event Type Other Location Off Campus Location Sponsors Penny W Stamps School of Art Design Website http events Move UP Why Some Cultures Advance While Others Paperback Mindware Tools for Smart Thinking Richard E Nisbett 4 2 out of 5 stars 18 Kindle Edition 12 99 By EDW on August 2 2015 Fantasy Football The Next Level How to Build a Mindware Tools for Smart Thinking Richard By S Holetz on August 2 This is one of the three books that all serious fantasy football players should read
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