Why We Make Mistakes: How We Look Without Seeing, Forget Things in Seconds, and Are All Pretty Sure We Are Way Above Average by Joseph T. Hallinan.
The book has blog feeling to it but its a great book for someone who is oblivious to neuroscience, behavioural economics et al and it sure will jump start their curiosity in those fields. Its funny how since the last decade the trend changed from "power of positive thinking" to blunt exposure of the human shortcomings and limitations. The myriad of books joining the bandwagon is great news but the question is the people who should be really reading them, when was the last time they read any book? This split in knowledge of the population is going to create another "speculating" crowd, oblivious to the fact that all this are facts and nothing to speculate about but an opportunity to improve ourselves in-spite of our shortcomings.
I love this quote from Alan Greenspan's Age of Turbulence:
"Despite the many short comings of human beings, it’s no accident that we persevere and advance in the face of adversity. It is in our nature, a fact that has, over the decades buoyed my optimism about the future."
Oddly the books ends on how "Being a Roman in Rome" is an important happiness factor, which is very true but I wasn't sure if that was the purpose of this book.
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