Good Thinking

This book gave great insights and stories on making good decisions, would recommend for a quick little read.

This was a super smart book about heuristics and mental models, explaining how and why people fall prey to false statistics, group think, and even conspiracy theories and fake news. While the author has demonstrable wisdom in many fields, the concepts are accessible and the anecdotes and stories throughout are engaging and illustrative of the larger concepts. Highly recommended.

A very well done book that could quell your anxiety and help reason out our crazy world. Critical thinking is the analysis and evaluation of an ideas in order to form a judgement. As humans it's the only thing that prevents us from making a critical error of faulty thinking. The internet and our media choices are loaded with lies and half truths. We can choose to believe anything. This emotional response only drags us further into our tribes and disallows us to reach out of our own ideological group. This book employs scientific and analytical thinking to sift through the cacophony of news with which we are faced. Pulling from historical moments in time and lesser known individuals, examples of confusion from the truth to the absurd, are explored in this book. This author helps the reader have a plan to analyze thoughts, dissolve the rhetoric, shine light on sources and review the science, or lack of, in this nebulous time of mass information..

Wonderful, clever look at critical thinking

I loved this book and couldn’t put it down. The writing is excellent, in a conversational tone, and with a sense of humor. Even the footnotes are worth reading. This book has everything I like, including politics, history of science, and philosophy of science. Where the book discusses actual science, everything is well explained. The book also brilliantly discusses biases of thinking. It was enlightening to look at my own biases. Overall, this is an outstanding book and is science writing at its best. It’s one of those books where I was disappointed when I reached the end. Thank you to NetGalley and The Experiment for the advance reader copy.

The author does a good job of detailing how to think clearly, something which is sorely needed in these times of misinformation that gets amplified and quickly spread. Although I won’t remember all of the specifics of the arguments and fallacies that are presented, the book fosters a mindset of skepticism and unemotional analysis. It is written in a clear and non-technical style, and it comes across as a thorough treatment of the subject.

This book, and others like it, might be accused of “preaching to the choir” because I think its readers are most likely to be those who are already of a scientific, analytical, or philosophical bent. The challenge is to get the book into the hands of those who could most benefit from it.

It is a lengthy book, which was probably necessary to cover all of the material. However, there is a fair amount of repetition. A second or third explanation may help clarify a point, but too much of that adds to the length of the book and detracts from the flow of reading. There is also too much stating what will be addressed later in the book. This really does not tease me or keep my interest piqued, but is superfluous and distracting.

A well-written book about critical thinking and the biases of thinking. Although quite long and repetitive in some chapters, I was able to stay engaged and found the writing easy to read. The book really delves into critical thinking, biases, and the biases of thinking. There are multiple examples and historical scenarios throughout, which really how highlight emotional responses and bias can fuel misinformation and conspiracies.

Thanks to NetGalley, David Robert Grimes, and The Experiment for an advanced eBook in exchange for my honest review.

A surprisingly comprehensive look at nonsense and insensibility in our modern culture, a successor work to Carl Sagan's classic Candle in the Dark.

An excellent overview of the ways in which people deceive themselves. Some of the territory is well worn, but I particularly enjoyed the chapter on false balance. As is usually the case, the people who need this book won't read it.

Incredibly thought-stimulating book detailing metacognition and how to review our biases and fallacies in our individual ways of thinkings, of others, and more. As logic has transferred out of school curriculums, this is an interesting read and one I recommend to everyone as a method to review ourselves as life goes on.