Loserthink, page 21
You can’t get the right answer until you frame the question correctly. And partisans rarely do.
CHAPTER 15
A Final Word
If you made it all the way to the end of this book, you are well on your way to leaving your mental prison behind. It might happen quickly, or it might take some time. Now that you have been exposed to the productive thinking techniques in this book, you will start to notice them in your environment, and that will reinforce your understanding of them and move them closer to the top of your mind.
I’ll say one more time that I have made every mistake in this book, usually more than once. If you follow me on Twitter, at @ScottAdamsSays, you’ll see me making some of these mistakes again, but you will also see people correcting me. That delights me and helps me at the same time. But it never embarrasses me.
Moving toward the Golden Age is a joint project. It requires all of us to think more productively and to nudge each other as needed. Collectively, I hope we can lose our superstition about “common sense” and replace it with the time-tested ways of thinking that are spread across different disciplines and summarized in this book.
Science tells us that people retain only a small part of what they learn, so I will close by telling you which parts you should try hardest to remember.
THINGS TO REMEMBER
Don’t engage in mind reading. It isn’t a human skill.
Think of your ego as a tool, not your identity. Track your predictions to build up some useful humility about your worldview. Put yourself in embarrassing situations regularly to teach yourself there is no lasting pain.
The past no longer exists. Don’t let your attachment to the past influence your decisions today.
If you haven’t mentioned the next best alternative to your proposed plan, you haven’t said anything at all, and smart people would be wise to ignore you.
If you are arguing over the definition of a word instead of the best way forward, you are not part of the productive world.
If you are sure one variable is all you need to grasp a complicated topic, the problem is probably on your end.
Occam’s razor (the idea that the simplest explanation is usually correct) is utter nonsense in the way it is commonly employed. We all think our opinions are the simplest explanations.
Fairness cannot be obtained in most cases because of its subjective nature. The closest you can get is equal application of the law.
If your argument depends on that one time something happened, you do not have an argument. You have a story.
If your argument depends entirely on the so-called slippery slope, you don’t have much of an argument. Everything changes until there’s a reason for it to stop. Mowing your lawn is not a slippery slope to shaving your dog.
Coincidences usually mean nothing. And they are the fuel of confirmation bias. If your argument depends entirely on not knowing how else to explain coincidences, you have a poor imagination, not an argument. Coincidences might tell you where to look first for confirmation of a theory, but that is as far as they can go.
Avoid halfpinions that ignore either the costs or the benefits of a plan.
Don’t use analogies to predict. Look to causes and effects.
Don’t judge a group by its worst 5 percent. If you do, you’re probably in the worst 5 percent of your own group.
Understand the limits of expert advice, and be skeptical of experts who have financial incentives to mislead.
Those are the most powerful points to take away, but I hope you find value in the rest of the book as well and refer to it often. I also hope you find a reason to gift it to someone in your life who could benefit from more productive ways of thinking.
Thank you for reading my book!
Acknowledgments
Thank you to the social media trolls who made this book possible. If it had not been for your nonstop attempts to make me sad, I would not have had the material to write this book. Nor would it have been this much fun.
Thank you to all the people in my life who have pointed out the flaws in my thinking over the years. I didn’t like it when it was happening, but I have learned to recognize it as a gift. I tried to pay it forward.
Thank you to my amazing editor, Leah Trouwborst, for helping me engineer this book. You impress me with your talent and professionalism, and I’m hard to impress.
Thank you to my publisher, Adrian Zackheim, for giving me the confidence to become an author years ago, and for continuing to trust my voice on completely different topics. Your trust makes me do better work.
Thank you to Zora DeGrandpre for checking my science references in this book. If I got anything wrong in my interpretation of the science, don’t blame her; she probably told me not to write it that way. Sometimes I chose simplicity over completeness, to convey the general point without getting lost in the weeds.
Thank you to Kristina Basham for accepting and loving me exactly the way I am. You are the best part of my life.
Notes
CHAPTER 1: WHAT IS LOSERTHINK?
1. K. Mahmood, “Do People Overestimate Their Information Literacy Skills? A Systematic Review of Empirical Evidence on the Dunning-Kruger Effect,” Communications in Information Literacy, 2016, 198–213.
2. Aaron E. Carroll, “Peer Review: The Worst Way to Judge Research, Except for All the Others,” New York Times, November 5, 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/11/05/upshot/peer-review-the-worst-way-to-judge-research-except-for-all-the-others.html.
3. Sheila Kaplan, “Duke University to Pay $112.5 Million to Settle Claims of Research Misconduct,” New York Times, March 25, 2019, www.nytimes.com/2019/03/25/science/duke-settlement-research.html.
4. Richard Jacoby, “The FDA’s Phony Nutrition Science: How Big Food and Agriculture Trumps Real Science—and Why the Government Allows It,” Salon, April 10, 2015, www.salon.com/2015/04/12/the_fdas_phony_nutrition_science_how_big_food_and_agriculture_trumps_real_science_and_why_the_government_allows_it/.
5. Dan Robitzski, “Faulty Studies Mean Everything You Know about Nutrition Is Wrong,” Futurism, July 2018, https://futurism.com/the-things-we-know-about-nutrition-are-wrong-thanks-to-faulty-studies; Julia Belluz, “Why (Almost) Everything You Know about Food Is Wrong,” Vox, August 16, 2016, www.vox.com/2016/1/14/10760622/nutrition-science-complicated.
6. Susan Solomon and Diane J. Ivy, “Emergence of Healing in the Antarctic Ozone Layer,” Science, July 15, 2016, 269–74.
7. Einstein Sabrina Stierwalt, “Why Is the Ozone Hole Shrinking?,” Scientific American, March 22, 2017, www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-is-the-ozone-hole-shrinking.
CHAPTER 3: THINKING LIKE A PSYCHOLOGIST
1. Julia Jacobs, “DeSantis Warns Florida Not to ‘Monkey This Up,’ and Many Hear a Racist Dog Whistle,” New York Times, August 29, 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/08/29/us/politics/desantis-monkey-up-gillum.html.
2. Marc Fisher, John Woodrow Cox, and Peter Hermann, “Pizzagate: From Rumor, to Hashtag, to Gunfire in D.C.,” Washington Post, December 6, 2016, www.washingtonpost.com/local/pizzagate-from-rumor-to-hashtag-to-gunfire-in-dc/2016/12/06/4c7def50-bbd4-11e6-94ac-3d324840106c_story.html.
3. Jean Kumagai, “Finally, a Likely Explanation for the ‘Sonic Weapon’ Used at the U.S. Embassy in Cuba,” IEEE Spectrum, March 1, 2018, https://spectrum.ieee.org/semiconductors/devices/finally-a-likely-explanation-for-the-sonic-weapon-used-at-the-us-embassy-in-cuba; Julian Borger, “Mass Hysteria May Explain ‘Sonic Attacks’ in Cuba, Say Top Neurologists,” The Guardian, October 12, 2017, www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/12/cuba-mass-hysteria-sonic-attacks-neurologists.
4. L. Trick, E. Watkins, S. Windeatt, and C. Dickens, “The Association of Perseverative Negative Thinking with Depression, Anxiety and Emotional Distress in People with Long-Term Conditions: A Systematic Review,” Journal of Psychosomatic Research, December 1, 2016, 89–101; F. Clancy, A. Prestwich, L. Caperon, and D. B. O’Connor, “Perseverative Cognition and Health Behaviors: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis,” Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, November 8, 2016, 534.
5. “Chronic Stress Puts Your Health at Risk,” Mayo Clinic, March 19, 2019, www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/stress-management/in-depth/stress/art-20046037.
CHAPTER 5: THINKING LIKE AN HISTORIAN
1. Michael H. Romanowski, “Problems of Bias in History Textbooks,” Point of View, March 1996, 170–73; Ray Raphael, “Are U.S. History Textbooks Still Full of Lies and Half-Truths?,” History News Network, https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/7219.
CHAPTER 6: THINKING LIKE AN ENGINEER
1. “Overdose Death Rates,” National Institute on Drug Abuse, January 29, 2019, www.drugabuse.gov/related-topics/trends-statistics/overdose-death-rates.
2. Dan Braha and Marcus A. M. De Aguiar, “Voting Contagion: Modeling and Analysis of a Century of U.S. Presidential Elections,” PLOS ONE, May 18, 2017, DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0177970.
CHAPTER 7: THINKING LIKE A LEADER
1. J. J. Halpern and R. C. Stern, eds. Debating Rationality: Nonrational Aspects of Organizational Decision Making (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998).
CHAPTER 8: THINKING LIKE A SCIENTIST
1. Lewis Johnson, “Searching for the World’s Best Investments? Begin by ‘Inverting,’” July 26, 2018, http://blog.capitalwealthadvisors.com/trends-tail-risks/searching-for-the-worlds-best-investments-begin-by-inverting.
2. Charles T. Munger, Poor Charlie’s Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger, 3rd ed., (Marceline, MO: Walsworth, 2005).
CHAPTER 9: THINKING LIKE AN ENTREPRENEUR
1. Glenn Kessler, “Do Nine out of 10 New Businesses Fail, as Rand Paul Claims?,” Washington Post, January 27, 2014, www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2014/01/27/do-9-out-of-10-new-businesses-fail-as-rand-paul-claims/?utm_term=.edc51535420f.
CHAPTER 10: THINKING LIKE AN ECONOMIST
1. Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power (New York: Public Affairs, 2019).
2. Robert J. Szczerba, “15 Worst Tech Predictions of All Time,” Forbes, January 9, 2015, www.forbes.com/sites/robertszczerba/2015/01/05/15-worst-tech-predictions-of-all-time/#75e002531299.
3. “25 Famous Predictions That Were Proven to Be Horribly Wrong,” List25, March 13, 2014, https://list25.com/25-famous-predictions-that-were-proven-to-be-horribly-wrong/5/.
4. “Things People Said: Bad Predictions,” www.rinkworks.com/said/predictions.shtml.
5. Allison Berry, “Top 10 Failed Predictions,” Time, October 21, 2011, http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2097462_2097456_2097459,00.html.
6. “25 Famous Predictions That Were Proven to Be Horribly Wrong,” List25, March 13, 2014, https://list25.com/25-famous-predictions-that-were-proven-to-be-horribly-wrong/.
CHAPTER 11: THINGS PUNDITS SAY THAT YOU SHOULD NOT COPY
1. Olivia Beavers, “Jimmy Carter: Media ‘Harder’ on Trump Than Other Presidents,” The Hill, October 22, 2017, https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/356639-carter-media-has-been-harder-on-trump-than-other-presidents.
2. B. S. McEwen, “In Pursuit of Resilience: Stress, Epigenetics, and Brain Plasticity,” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, February 25, 2016, 56–64; J. A. Sturgeon, P. H. Finan, and A. J. Zautra, “Affective Disturbance in Rheumatoid Arthritis: Psychological and Disease-Related Pathways,” Nature Reviews Rheumatology, September 12, 2016, 532–44.
CHAPTER 12: THE GOLDEN AGE FILTER
1. “25 Famous Predictions That Were Proven to Be Horribly Wrong,” List25, March 13, 2014, https://list25.com/25-famous-predictions-that-were-proven-to-be-horribly-wrong/5/.
2. Taylor Hatmaker, “A Popular Genealogy Website Just Helped Solve a Serial Killer Cold Case in Oregon,” TechCrunch, January 31, 2019, https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/31/hlavka-murder-gedmatch-dna/; Alex Horton, “A Suspected Killer Eluded Capture for 25 Years. Then Investigators Got His Aunt’s DNA,” Washington Post, February 17, 2019, www.washingtonpost.com/crime-law/2019/02/16/suspected-killer-eluded-capture-years-then-investigators-got-his-aunts-dna/?utm_term=.6d643569909a.
3. Steven Beard, “Is There Really Evidence for a Decline of War?,” OEF Research, May 8, 2018, https://oefresearch.org/think-peace/evidence-decline-war.
4. “Yemen Crisis: Why Is There a War?,” BBC News, March 21, 2019, www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-29319423.
5. “10 Breakthrough Technologies 2019, Curated by Bill Gates,” MIT Technology Review, February 28, 2019, www.technologyreview.com/lists/technologies/2019/.
6. “Secretary Perry Launches Versatile Test Reactor Project to Modernize Nuclear Research and Development Infrastructure,” Just the Real News, March 2, 2019, www.justtherealnews.com/2019/02/28/secretary-perry-launches-versatile-test-reactor-project-to-modernize-nuclear-research-and-development-infrastructure/.
7. Ibid.
8. Climeworks, 2019, www.climeworks.com.
9. Valeria Perasso, “Turning Carbon Dioxide into Rock—Forever,” BBC News, May 18, 2018, www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-43789527.
10. Global Thermostat, 2019, https://globalthermostat.com.
11. Strata Worldwide, 2019, www.strataworldwide.com.
12. WhenHub, 2019, www.whenhub.com.
13. Mandy Roth, “4 Ways Telemedicine Is Changing Healthcare,” Health Leaders, August 28, 2018, www.healthleadersmedia.com/innovation/4-ways-telemedicine-changing-healthcare.
14. “Better Health with Smartphone Apps,” Harvard Health, April 2015, www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/better-health-with-smartphone-apps.
15. Angelica LaVito, Christina Farr, and Hugh Son, “Amazon’s Joint Health-Care Venture Finally Has a Name: Haven,” CNBC, March 6, 2019, www.cnbc.com/2019/03/06/amazon-jp-morgan-berkshire-hathaway-health-care-venture-named-haven.html.
CHAPTER 13: HOW TO BREAK OUT OF YOUR MENTAL PRISON
1. Keith Collins and Kevin Roose, “Tracing a Meme from the Internet’s Fringe to a Republican Slogan,” New York Times, November 4, 2018, www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/11/04/technology/jobs-not-mobs.html.
2. Jonathan Turley, “Witch Hunt or Mole Hunt? Times Bombshell Blows Up All Theories,” The Hill, January 12, 2019, https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/425033-witch-hunt-or-mole-hunt-times-bombshell-blows-up-all-theories.
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
Index
The page numbers in this index refer to the printed version of this book. The link provided will take you to the beginning of that print page. You may need to scroll forward from that location to find the corresponding reference on your e-reader.
Note: Page numbers in italics refer to illustrations.
abortion debate, 144
A/B testing, 70
accuracy, 13, 88, 89–90
action favored over inaction, 118
Adams Law of Slow-Moving Disasters, 139
Afghanistan, 172
African Americans, 185–86, 191
age and perspective, advantages of, 59
The Age of Surveillance Capitalism (Zuboff), 136
air-conditioning, 174–75
alternatives, considering, 134–36, 231
Altucher, James, 114
Amazon, 181–82
American Indians, 60–61
analogies used in arguments, 149–53, 232
anecdotal evidence, 99–100
apologists, 30–31, 160–61
apologizing, 210
arrogance, avoiding, 36, 40
artistic integrity, 40, 41
artists’ powers of imagination, 53. See also imagination, failure of
Asian-Americans, 65, 191
assumptions, inaccurate, 54, 55
authenticity, 158–59
Barr, Roseanne, 211–12
Beatles, 138
behavioral change effecting mental change, 206–7
being yourself, 158–59
Berkshire Hathaway, 181
big data, benefits of, 183–84
blame, assigning, 81–83, 214–15
blockchain technologies, 139–40
body language, 37, 38
Booker, Cory, 150–51, 151
border security
and equating Republicans with racists, 57
and framing the issue, 228
and friction introduced by fences/walls, 153
and one-variable illusion, 86
and Trump, 57, 228
brainwashing, 216–18
Branson, Richard, 174–75
breathing techniques, 36–37, 38
Breitbart, 201
capitalism and capitalists, 31, 82, 85, 116
CarbFix, 176
Carbon Engineering, 175–76
cars, self-driving, 166–67, 179
Carter, Jimmy, 150
cartoon business, 40–41. See also Dilbert comic strip
car wash dilemma, 43, 55
causation, predictions based on, 151–52
cause and solution, separating, 80–83
