Dont Believe Everything You Think

by Thomas Kida

Traditional Chinese edition of Don't Believe Everything You Think: The 6 Basic Mistakes We Make in Thinking. This is a guide for developing critical thinking and problem solving skills by Professor Thomas Kida of University of Massachusetts. In Traditional Chinese. Distributed by Tsai Fong Books, Inc.

Genres: Psychology, Nonfiction, Science, Self Help, Philosophy, Personal Development, Skepticism

384 pages, Perfect Paperback

First published May 1, 2006

Reviews

[Ahmed Abdelhamid · Rating 3 out of 5]

لا تصدق كل شيء تفكر فيه. لأنك ربما تقع في خطيئة من ستة على الأقل:
1. أنت تحب القصص أكثر من الإحصائات
فسيارة صديقك الذي لا تعمل, ليست دليلا أن كل منتجات ذات الشركة ردئية... ربما صديقك حظه سيء فقط.

2. أنت في الأصل تريد الوصول لما يؤكد ما في عقلك لا ما ينفيه
أسلحة الدمار الشامل في العراق أكبر مثل, على الرغم من وجود أي دليل مادي فإن الجميع حتى وقت الحرب كان مقتنعا بوجود أسلحة.
أنت تحب فلان, و تريد أن تصدق أنه على حق, ولو ثبت العكس

3. أنت ترى العالم بشكل مختلف
لا تصدق ما تدركه حواسك. لأن حواسك كلها قد تخدعك. ما تراه عينيك ليس بالضرورة حقيقيا, و حتى الذاكرة بإمكانها أن تخلق أشياء غير موجودة... قد تخلق أنت لأسباب سيكلوجية بحتة أشياء لا تمت للواعق بصلة. أنت تعتمد على "التنميط" و "التأطير" قبل أن ترى و تسمع... لا تتعجب أنك تفهم بشكل خاطئ!

4. أنت تسهل الأمور أكثر مما هي عليه
وفي ذلك خلل كبير. من أجل التبسيط قد تربط بين فرضيات لا علاقة لها ببعض أصلا مثل أن يكون فلان مصري فإنه مرح. أو كونه عالم فإنه صادق. أنت تهمل عدد كبير من المتغيرات لتجعل قرارك سهلا.

5. لا تقدر دور الصدفة
دائما التفسير المنطقي لأي معضلة فكرية هو أبسط التفاسير. هناك أشياء تحدث بالصدفة. تقبل ذلك

6. لدينا ذكريات خاطئة
و أنت تبني على هذه الذكريات انطباعاتك

للتفكير "مناهج" و للبحث في المسائل الجدلية "منهج للنظر" بحيث يصل الرجل لما يبغيه من التفسير "المنطقي العلمي" لأي مسألة.


عن توماس كيدا, لا تصدق كل ما تفكر فيه
--أحمد عبد الحميد

[Louis · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. It's an easy engaging read where the author covers the 6 basic mistakes we make in thinking and coming to conclusions or making decisions:
- We prefer stories to statistics
- We seek to confirm, not to question, our ideas
- We rarely appreciate the role of chance and coincidence in shaping events
- We sometimes misperceive the world around us
- We tend to oversimplify our thinking
- We have faulty memories

While I thought I was "aware" enough of these mental potholes that could trip me up, I admit I caught a few that I do fall into occasionaly.

The author uses various examples to prove his point and they are varied enough to show the issue from multiple angles. This books is useful in that besides showing how we can trip ourselves up, it also shows how those knowledgable in this area, can use it to their benefit in convincing people to their side on an issue. (News, court cases, politics, ...)

I do wonder if on my next big decision will I be paralyzed in coming to a final answer or will I now go around and around questioning myself in an attempt to not fall prey to these 6 mistakes?

[Amy Bailey · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book's title is very appropriate. It says exactly what it means. It outlines several different examples and causes for how human thought can actually work against us as a society. While I thought most of this made a lot of sense, especially in today's current political climate of intense polarity, I thought the author was off base about a few things. That's the reason for the 3 stars. I also thought the book could have been shorter, as it was pretty repetitive at times. Now on to the things I disagreed with.

First of all, I'm a creative person. I do believe in the power of the mind and imagination, but I am also somewhat of a skeptic. The author surmises that people can make themselves believe whatever they want to believe. I think this is true. I do it myself on a regular basis. While there's no scientific evidence for such things as aliens, ghosts or angels, people vehemently believe they exist. The author believes that we should view everything scientifically, and everything should be analyzed before being accepted as truth. I definitely think he has a point to a certain extent.

What I take issue with is that it would appear the author thinks we should all become purely skeptical and rational. While I believe this is true most of the time, I think I would lead a pretty boring existence if I didn't allow my imagination to run wild every now and then. Another thing is that the author outlined scenarios in which people had made certain things happen simply by believing they'd reached a solution. Such things as a placebo actually curing a certain ailment. My question is... what harm is it that a mental and not medical cure actually was successful? Why does the author view it as not being successful simply because the power of the mind was at work. It seemed he was contradicting himself and actually, at times, while trying to get people to think rationally, was proving that the power of positive thinking is actually a real and existing force.

Anyway, I could go on, but that was the main quibble I had with this book. But there were many things I actually did agree with, so I'm still glad I read it. I will just simply take it with a grain of salt and hope that I can stop myself from one day falling victim to the actual bad ways my mind can play tricks on me.

[Kathy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a required book for a class, but it was an easy read and well worth the time. Although I am generally a skeptic by nature and I thought much of the author’s recommendations were common sense, the chapter on our tendencies to ignore statistics was very informative to me. I knew that it is true that people ignore statistics and believe false information, but I didn’t know how to actually figure it out mathematically; this book broke that formula down very quickly and easily.

I believe the time will come when I will require my children to read this. They are too young yet, but I want to make sure they look at the world with a critical eye and accurately assess all the information presented to them. It actually scares me the amount of information that is forwarded/passed off as “true” when in fact, they are urban legend, based on faulty data, rhetoric, or outright lies fabricated to support someone’s agenda. I get these forwards and FB posts daily!

I wish everyone were required to read it, although I’m sure there are plenty of “don’t confuse me with the facts” folks around that it wouldn’t make a difference to them. I guess ya can’t fix stupid. 4.5 stars.

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent summary of several common errors we're all prone to making in our thinking, especially if we're not on guard against them. This book flows well, and the author provides numerous examples of each category of mistake he describes. This should be a text for the required courses on critical thinking that should be in the curricula at every high school and college in the country - make that in the world.

There's some overlap here with the list of formal fallacies covered in a course on logic, but this book covers some ground the logic texts don't; both together are better than either alone, and it never hurts to have more lights shining into our blind spots.

[Jacob · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a pretty good book, which reads somewhere between conversational and "psychology textbook". If you're familiar with basic psychology and common cognitive shortcuts / mistakes people's minds make (like from 50 Great Myths of Popular Psychology: Shattering Widespread Misconceptions about Human Behavior, You Are Not So Smart: Why You Have Too Many Friends on Facebook, Why Your Memory Is Mostly Fiction, and 46 Other Ways You're Deluding Yourself, Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes, The Little Book of Behavioral Investing: How Not to Be Your Own Worst Enemy, Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions and The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home), then a lot of this is things you're familiar with. However, it's still good coverage of the material.

The author acknowledges that all people are very vulnerable to the mistakes in this book, including himself. That's good because he repeats a classic mistake that has become a pet peeve for me: evolutionary biology stories. Despite mentioning repeatedly that we tend to believe stories over statistics despite the fact that stories are anecdotal and don't have science to back them up, he also repeats a story about how we evolved to look for causes to things and how that desire must run strongly in the human race because the people who did that survived better and had more offspring. It's a nice story, but as the author himself reminds us, there is absolutely no scientific evidence for populations of humans who didn't look for causes to things dying out in the face of populations of humans who did.

One other nit-pick I have is the author's claim that no one selling an investing strategy has a solid money-making strategy, because why wouldn't they just keep it to themselves and get rich that way? While that is a strong argument, there are a couple of valid reasons for it:

1) A good strategy usually only works within a certain range of wealth, and if you've made enough money you have to find other strategies (that's why strategies that would be good for me would not for Warren Buffett and vice versa). So, theoretically someone could be selling a strategy they can no longer use at a larger scale (unlikely, but at least possible).

2) Even a good strategy entails risk. It's much safer and steadier money to sell a strategy (for example, by managing a fund of other people's money that follows that strategy) than to employ it yourself using only your own money.

In any case, I enjoyed this and other psychology enthusiasts probably would too.

[Sarah · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm not much a reviewer, but I do have a few thoughts to share regarding this book, especially considering its higher than average rating.

In addition to this book, I also wanted to read "How We Know What Isn't So: The Fallibility of Human Reason in Everyday Life" for some time now. Our local used bookshop had the previous and not the latter, so I picked it up.

My honest opinion is, don't waste your time, unless you're easily impressed or have truly never read anything on the subject matter before. I still intend to read the aforementioned book, but I sincerely felt that this particular book was, for the large part, a waste of time. You can ascertain all the information from the prologue and epilogue. I found the author's writing style dry and uninteresting (which is surprising, because it IS such an interesting subject matter) and quite redundant at times. Quite redundant.

[Temecka · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read this for class. I have to say in the beginning I did enjoy this book but the further I got into it the more it just seemed like what I had already read. I don't recommend this book. It wasn't worth my time. If you read it the first 4-5 chapters were worth reading but after that it just sounded like the same thing reworded.

[Ernesto Rodríguez · Rating 4 out of 5]

It seems we're on a breakthrough in history understanding how the brain works and why we think the way we think It's a wonderful subject and I'm finding more and more books about this. Very interesting read. I has six broad examples of this. I truly enjoyed it.

[Doreen · Rating 5 out of 5]

While some reviewers found the information here to be repetitive, I did not. I love this book's format. I love the statistics used to prove the six statements posted on the book's cover. I love the author's writing; his explanations were easily understood by a layperson.

As a person who loves facts, each section of this book was like opening presents on Christmas morning; each chapter/present, one wonderful surprise after another! I've always said that we should welcome dissenting opinions from others. If we surround ourselves only with others who think like us, act like us, and believe the things in which we believe, then we do ourselves a disservice. How can we possibly form sound conclusions in our lives if we only consider 'facts' and opinions from sources that mirror our own? A simple example *sarcasm*: Conservatives who read and listen to news which only reinforces what they already believe to be true, dismissing anything that is not right-leaning...lumping anything outside their beliefs to be 'too far to the Left'. Liberals who do the same; reading and listening to only information which bolsters their beliefs, ignoring any facts to the contrary because conservatives are wrong and liberals are always correct. Per studies in this book, I'm normal! I like to find information that reinforces what I believe in, just like everyone else...;) Of course, having this knowledge, I will continue to make the effort NOT to fall into that category of people.

I learned about, 'regression to the mean', as it applies to the stock market and to professional athletes. I became familiar with misperceptions in what affects employee productivity and about the degree to which religious people are altruists, compared to non-religious people. The differences between Science and Pseudoscience are explained here, too.

Some others: The HALO EFFECT...attributing characteristics to a person that are consistent with what we already believe to be true about that person. OCCAM'S RAZOR...accepting the explanation with the fewest assumptions. ILLUSORY CORRELATION...seeing associations that DON'T actually exist. HEURISTICS...general rules of thumb that we use to simplify complicated judgments. GROUPTHINK....tightly cohesive groups that are relatively isolated from outside, dissenting opinions. These are but a few interesting terms to which I was introduced. I just love all of this!

Again, I found no part of this book to be repetitive. I disagree with those whose reviews state that a reader should only read the beginning because it covers everything. The first several chapters do NOT cover everything. The whole book must be read. It's the totality of the book's info that is valuable. It's ironic.........by electing NOT to read the book in its entirety, these specific reviewers succeed in proving many of the book's teachings! "Self-fulfilling prophesies are related to confirming strategies", etc...!

[Vicky · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a very valuable read since it teaches you the importance of remaining skeptical, especially in today's world where people will post just about anything on Facebook and people often take it as scientific fact.

I had to read this book for my first year seminar in my college, and I really enjoyed reading each chapter because many things would seem like they would be common sense but I think we always need a good reminder about how our brain can fail us.

[Lew · Rating 3 out of 5]

A reader of this book has to adjust their reading perception to that of a student of a text book. Judged as such, there are some good lessons to be learned.

I only wish I had been able to read this in my 20s rather than as I approach the end. I might have been a bit more successful and more of a leader.

[Alejandra López · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall this is a good overview of basic critical thinking (although a bit repetitive at times). I was, however, a bit thrown away by some of the examples Kida used, such as the ones on false memories which touched upon sexual assault.

[Mehmet · Rating 5 out of 5]

Out of the ten or so critical-thinking books I have read (and about half a dozen that I have taught out of), this is the best-written one (from the students' point of view, or so they've told me).

[Lauren Grove · Rating 2 out of 5]

mid

[Patrick Noble · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very nice app

[Akshay singh · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was great read.
Author put on great examples to show how our thinking can be flawed. Also made me realised why stereotypes are so wrong

[Tay Rayemberly ☆ · Rating 4 out of 5]

The thought's in our mind are not facts....

[Manuel B. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very deep and disturbing...an adventurous tale of boys struggling to remain sane as they are stranded on an island, this book has many meanings that can be interpreted.

[Stephen · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is some very good stuff in this book on tools for critical thinking. But there is also a rather worrying example of exactly the kind of sloppy thinking Kida is supposed to be warning us against. He spends considerable space on the gambler's fallacy, and then launches into a discussion of the unpredictability of the Stock Market, and how research has shown that there is no evidence that highly paid fund managers add any value to an investment fund, and that over the long haul, no funds significantly beat the index.

All this may well be right, but Kida's error lies in what he does with these data:

"Oftentimes investors move their money into a fund that has experienced good recent performance. However, statistcs tell us that we have regression to the mean. That is, if a fund is currently outperforming the market, its performance is likely to drop in the future to bring it back to average. And so, if we buy into a fund right after it has posted recent gains, we're likely to be in for a fall. In effect, going after strong past performance often means we take money out of funds that are likely to rebound, and put it into funds that are ready to drop. "

Kida has misunderstood regression towards the mean, and has committed an error known as the gambler's fallacy (which he had already discussed in an earlier chapter).

Let us suppose that fund manager's are indeed irrelevent, and that a fund has a 50/50 chance of underperforming or overperforming the market each year. If this assumption is indeed correct - and this is indeed Kida's argument, then whether the fund will outperform or underperform the market this year is entirely unconnected with whether the fund outperformed or underperfomed the market last year.

If Kida is correct, then it makes no difference in the long run whether we leave the money where it is or move it (except for dealing charges incurred of course), because all funds will eventually do equally well.

If we buy into a fund right after it has posted gains then it is wrong to expect that we are in for a big fall. We are just as likely to do well (or badly) as if we buy into a fund that recently posted very poor gains.

But what is regression towards the mean then?

If we take the whole "population" of funds, and we measure all their respective gains each year, we come up with a mean (average) gain for all funds. Now, suppose we choose the 100 best performing funds and measure their gains - because these are the best perfroming funds, their mean gain will, of course, be higher than the mean for all funds.

Let us suppose that their mean gain was twice that of all funds.

Now next year we measure these means again. The mean gain for all funds and the mean for what were last year's 100 best funds. What we find is that the mean for the 100 best funds of last year is now much closer to the mean of all funds. If fund performance is entirely random then that mean may be less than the mean for all funds, or more - but it will almost certainly be less than twice that of all funds.

Why does this happen? Because there was nothing special about the 100 best funds, and there is no guarantee that the funds that did well last year will do well this year. Thus their average should approach the population average.

But any individual fund could still be in the top 100 - and we would expect that to be the case. Regression towards the mean is only concerned with averages.

Still not convinced?

By Kida's principle - moving money into an outperforming fund sets you up for a fall. Thus it would follow that moving money into an underperforming fund will set you up for a gain. Therefore, one should put money into the underperforming funds as the best strategy for success.

But it doesn't work. Because Kida is wrong.

If the performance of a fund is random, the best strategy for success is to buy the fund with the lowest charges and leave your money where it is (or better still - just buy the shares that all the funds hold, and hold the shares)

[Jumana92 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Don’t believe everything you think Is a wonderful phycology book. It is so helpful for one, who has doubt about your thinking. people are not always right is the best description of the amazing book. If someone always thinks that his or her thinking is the right option, he or she probably needs to read this book. When people love someone they think his choice is always right. This book goes through a lot of situation when people think their choice is the best and the fact is not. The book shows a example of two friends, one of them has a bad car from one company, so the other one think that all the cars from the same company are bad. That is wrong if your friend has a problem so he is probably having bad luck with this company. On another word, people want to reach what their minds think about regardless if it is true or not. people see the world in a different way. They Don’t believe everything your senses tell you. Sometimes they see things they want to see them, but they are not existing .sometimes we live with memory people think they are truth ,but they are not. Thomas kida, on his book tries to make you strongly believe that people are always going to have something good going to happen in future

[Ellen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was a good overview of critical thinking pitfalls in modern times and a good introduction to critical thinking in general. Kida has a friendly style which draws you in and makes you feel like we are all in it together trying to become better critical thinkers. I suggest if you read this book to also plan to read a book that focuses more on the basics of critical thinking such as Critical Thinking: Tools for Taking Charge of Your Learning and Your Life

[Bob Collins · Rating 4 out of 5]

"You are what you think . . . geez, that's frightening!" - Lilly Tomlin.

Kida reviews some of the basic cognitive tendencies that can cause us to develop inaccurate beliefs and make incorrect decisions. These tendencies come from the subconscious and are not easy to detect when we encounter them - and we encounter them daily. In most cases, we still operate pretty well, even with these tendencies, but every once and a while, they can cause us real problems.

Although there is not fast and sure cure, Kida suggests that scientific thinking and healthy skepticism (that is investigating and evaluate the evidence before making a final decision) can help us overcome some of these tendencies.

[Frank · Rating 4 out of 5]

I originally was going to read 'Thinking, fast and slow', but since I did not get a chance to obtain that from the library, I found this book instead; I'm glad I found this book, because it gave a very good introduction about our ways of thought, and how that can sometimes allow others to take advantage of how we think. There was an especially interesting idea covered in the book called 'groupthink', which is the concept of a large group having the same collective thought. The bystander effect is a good example of 'groupthink', and I can definitely apply this to many of the current events happening today.

Overall, a good introductory book, now on to Thinking, Fast and Slow!

[Dave · Rating 4 out of 5]

I first heard about this book on a podcast interview with the author. As an educator I find books that deal with conceptual change, biases and decision-making very interesting. Kida's book so far is living up to its promise.

I liked the book. It's not ground breaking or earth shaking news in critical thinking or decision making but the information is worth finding and reviewing. The book describes common pitfalls, that divert us from sound reasoning. I enjoyed some of the personal anecdotes and appreciated the expository style. Some people might find it too dry but I liked it.

[Steve Whiting · Rating 3 out of 5]

Everything you need to know is on the cover, where the 6 basic mistakes are enumerated - preferring stories to statistics, preferring confirmation to questioning, seeing causality in chance, errors of memory, oversimplifying and misinterpreting the evidence of our senses.

Kida explains how these 6 errors impact on our lives and how they colour our perceptions and memories, our estimations of risk and probability and many other areas.

[Wayland He · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed reading this book. I like how he breaks up into different sections and focuses on proving one point at a time. There were a few examples that he brought up in the book that didn't really make sense to me, but overall, the book was easy to follow and well-written. I recommend this to anyone who wants to be a better critical thinker.

[Debbie Greco · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book does a good job laying out a basic foundation for systematic critical thinking. I will definitely take away a bit of a check list. I did find the concepts and example started repeating themselves as I read. He is definitely not a fan of any kind of faith or religion, but otherwise some sound principles.

[Kevin · Rating 4 out of 5]

6 basic mistakes we make in thinking. Excellent information on common thought fallacies we all fall into. It explains well the how's and why's of the steps that lead us astray into these misconceptions. Also heavily weighed on the skeptics side of thought.

[Markii · Rating 5 out of 5]

[read while on vacation in Oahu- on the bus and on the beach]. quick, fun read. excellent intro to skepticism and critical thinking! (this plus shermer's "why people believe weird things" were my baptism into skepticism).