Why I chose to read this book?
A very strong recommendation from Bill Gates drove me towards reading it.
My Rating:
3/5
Personal take-away:
The author writes about the most important things in the world and does so in an open and engaging style. He busts myths using facts while explaining how and why much of what “everybody knows” is incorrect. To make it worse, nobody seems to be making enough efforts to do a reality-check.
Summary:
Most people have grossly inaccurate views of the world we live in. When asked simple questions about global trends, we systematically get the answers wrong and see the world to be much worse than it really is. The author presents the following 10 dramatic instincts that distort our perceptions:
- The Gap Instinct: We tend to divide things into 2 distinct groups and imagine a gap between them.
- The Negativity Instinct: We tend to instinctively notice the bad more than the good.
- The Straight Line Instinct: When we see a line going up steadily, we tend to assume the line will continue to go up in the foreseeable future.
- The Fear Instinct: We tend to perceive the world to be scarier than it really is.
- The Size Instinct: We tend to see things out of proportion, over-estimating the importance of a single event/person that’s visible to us.
- The Generalization Instinct: We tend to wrongly assume that everything or everyone in a category is similar.
- The Destiny Instinct: We tend to assume that the destinies of people, cultures, countries etc. are predetermined by certain factors, and those factors are fixed and unchanging.
- The Single Perspective Instinct: We tend to focus on single causes or solutions, which are easier to grasp and make our problems seem easier to solve.
- The Blame Instinct: When something goes wrong, we instinctively blame it on someone or something.
- The Urgency Instinct: We tend to rush into a problem or opportunity for fear that there’s no time and we may be too late.