Blunder Review
My Review of Blunder - Why Smart People Make Bad
Decisions
by Zachary Shore
I loved this book. It is one of the best of its kind. Zachary
Shore uses great historical examples of blunders to show how
we make mistakes in our thinking--and how they can have huge
consequences. He addresses exposure anxiety; how our fear of
appearing weak can cause us to make terrible decisions. He looks
at what he refers to as "causefusion," which is our
tendency to get confused about the causes of complex events,
and in particular, our desire to believe in simple causes at
the expense of better understandings.
The longing for simple explanations is examined further in
the chapter titled "Flatview," which has great examples
of major military and political blunders in history.
In the chapter, Cure-Allism, Shore looks at the creation of
prototypes, both in their more negative form of stereotypes and
in their general tendency to limit our thinking. The major blunder
of economist Jeffrey Sachs in trying to use the same privatization
plan in Russia as worked in Poland is detailed as a good example
of what can happen when we hold one ideological prescription
as the cure for all seemingly similar cases.
There is a lot to be learned from this book, and it would
be a blunder to ignore the lessons here.
And of course, don't forget to order a copy of my own book
on the many mental mistakes we are prone to...
Click
here to get your copy of Beyond Mental Slavery |
