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Blunder: Why Smart People Make Bad Decisions
For anyone whose best-laid plans have been foiled by faulty thinking, Blunder reveals how understanding seven simple traps-Exposure Anxiety, Causefusion, Flat View, Cure-Allism, Infomania, Mirror Imaging, Static Cling-can make us all less apt to err in our daily lives.
270 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2008
41 people are currently reading
678 people want to read
About the author
Zachary Shore
7 books16 followersZachary Shore is Associate Professor of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School, and a Senior Fellow at the Institute of European Studies, University of California, Berkeley. He previously served on the Policy Planning Staff at the U.S. Department of State through an International Affairs Fellowship from the Council on Foreign Relations. He has also worked as a National Security Fellow at Harvard’s Olin Institute for Strategic Studies and at the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies in Washington, DC.
Shore earned his doctorate in modern European history from St. Antony's College, Oxford, and has lived for more than six years in Europe, traveling for extended periods across the continent, including Germany, Russia, and the Balkans. His academic honors include winning Harvard's Derek Bok Teaching Award, Oxford's St. Antony's Book Prize, a Dupont Fellowship, an Idea Prize from Germany's Kõrber Foundation, and research grants from the Fulbright Foundation, Smith Richardson Foundation, Earhart Foundation, Daimler-Chrysler Foundation, Robert Bosch Foundation, and the Royal Historical Society of Great Britain. He has appeared on National Public Radio, Dialogue, and other media outlets.
Shore’s articles and editorials on foreign policy have appeared in The International Herald Tribune, The Los Angeles Times, The Baltimore Sun, Newsday, Haaretz, The National Interest, Orbis, The Journal of Contemporary History, and Intelligence and National Security. His books have been reviewed and profiled in Foreign Affairs, The Financial Times, Washington Monthly, The San Francisco Chronicle, and The New Republic On-line.
Shore earned his doctorate in modern European history from St. Antony's College, Oxford, and has lived for more than six years in Europe, traveling for extended periods across the continent, including Germany, Russia, and the Balkans. His academic honors include winning Harvard's Derek Bok Teaching Award, Oxford's St. Antony's Book Prize, a Dupont Fellowship, an Idea Prize from Germany's Kõrber Foundation, and research grants from the Fulbright Foundation, Smith Richardson Foundation, Earhart Foundation, Daimler-Chrysler Foundation, Robert Bosch Foundation, and the Royal Historical Society of Great Britain. He has appeared on National Public Radio, Dialogue, and other media outlets.
Shore’s articles and editorials on foreign policy have appeared in The International Herald Tribune, The Los Angeles Times, The Baltimore Sun, Newsday, Haaretz, The National Interest, Orbis, The Journal of Contemporary History, and Intelligence and National Security. His books have been reviewed and profiled in Foreign Affairs, The Financial Times, Washington Monthly, The San Francisco Chronicle, and The New Republic On-line.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 58 reviews
November 9, 2017
This book got me thinking of my own mental framework. Particularly, exposure anxiety and the masks we wear to “to keep the world from knowing about the pain and struggle inside.” After reading, I rededicated myself to building an open mind.
To succeed as a historian, you must become acutely sensitive to how other people think, to discover why they did something in the first place.
Douglas Feith, assistant to the US defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, was one of the principal architects of the USA war in Iraq. Feith accepts that history is no substitute for sound judgment. “Expertise is a very good thing, but it is not the same thing as sound judgment regarding strategy and policy.”
A cognition trap is the mental framework that led you to a blunder.
Exposure Anxiety: Fear of being seen as weak
Causefusion: confusing the causes of complex events
Flatview: seeing the world in one dimension
Cure-allism: believing that one size really fits all
Infomania: Obsessive relationship to information
Mirror Imaging: Thinking the other side thinks like us
Static Cling: Refusal to accept that a fundamental change is under way (a changing world)
Blunder explains the ways in which all nations, businesses and individuals weaken themselves. Most of the time, when someone blunders, they neither collapse nor revolt; they just squander precious resources and set back their progress toward prosperity, security and strength.
George Orwell, pen name of Eric Blair, police officer in the British Empire, mid-1920s, lower Burma. Rampaging elephant. Blair was sickened by the things he regularly felt compelled to do and witness as part of the colonial police. Essay about the elephant was an allegory on imperialism: Shooting an Elephant. In Orwell’s case, he feared that by not killing the elephant, the Burmese would not respect his authority.
Counsel of Cleon
427 BCE, a ship sailed from Athens on a grave assignment
bound for the Greek island of Mytilene, a region that had revolted against Athenian rule
Cleon: urged Athenians to show no mercy
Diodotus: Haste and anger are, to my mind, the two greatest obstacles to wise counsel. Haste usually goes with folly; anger is the mark of a primitive and narrow mind. Anyone who maintains that words cannot be a guide to action must be either a fool or one with some personal interest at stake.
Matthew McKay, SF Haight Ashbury Clinic, clinical psychologist
shame factor - people who believe that others will not love them if they see them for who they truly are: normal flawed individuals. “If our façade is penetrated, if someone catches a glimpse of us, we feel exposed, emotionally naked.”
Shame produces tremendous ambivalence in personal relationships. Some people live with a powerful sense of their own inadequacy. These people are perpetually trying to avoid feeling humiliated and to prevent others from recognizing what they feel is their true lack of worth. Others try to hide from others their bursts of emotion, like rage, depression or panic. To conceal their shame, most people create masks to project an air of confidence, control or flawlessness. They usually try to appear supremely confident. They either act tough or present themselves as cool and quiet. The aim is “to keep the world from knowing about the pain and struggle inside.”
Exposure anxiety makes victims worry that if others perceive them as weak or soft, then their credibility will be undermined. They fear a domino collapse of the things they hold dear: status, authority, and aspirations for greater things. Generally, when someone admits their faults, the person often gains the respect and trust of others.
Causefusion mala aria (bad air)
best antidote: An open mind
Flatview any rigid perspective that constricts our imagination to just one dimension
Thinking in a binary mode: good or evil… positive or negative
Most complex problems contain shades of gray
Flatviews lead us to simplistic solutions
Like causefusion, flatview is a type of reductionist thinking.
Stems from a lack of empathy and imagination.
Although ignorance can hamper judgment, lack of empathy or imagination are factors.
Imagination permits us to speculate how life could be different for ourselves and for others. It enables us to consider values and behaviors at variance with our own without rejecting them out of hand. Empathy is imagination of the heart. It lets us feel what others might be feeling. It empowers us to step inside another person’s emotional body and experience gut reactions. Too often, policy makers overlook the critical factors of anger, resentment and hate. In a detached world of strategy and theory, they forget their enemies and allies alike are ruled as much by emotion as by raw power calculations. Superior force does win battles, but it rarely resolves the roots of war.
Kindlon and Thompson, Raising Cain
“People are looking for simple answers. But human behavior defies simple explanation, whether we’re talking aggression or tenderness. What is clear is that every behavior is influenced by multiple forces, from biology to community.
Slum: settlement characterized by the lack of clean drinking water, insecure tenancy, and fragile housing. UN estimates that 1 in 6 urban dwellers now reside in a slum. Increasing by 25 million per year.
Power of prototypes: successful politicians are skilled at exploiting them.
Infomisering occurs when people convince themselves that their positions are threatened if knowledge is spread.
Temple Grandin, autistic professor of animal science at Colorado State Univ.
Rain Man research
Much male-female relationships involve a struggle to see situations from the other’s point of view.
Robert Burns: To a Louse
O would some Power the gift to give us
To see ourselves as others see us!
It would from many a blunder free us...
Blunders are most likely to occur and we exacerbate them when they do, if we insist on absolute certainty. Mental flexibility dramatically helps accomplish missions and achieve goals.
Mental flexibility, willingness to question the majority view, rejection of reductionism, development of empathy and imagination -- require hard work. Building blocks of wisdom. They take conscious effort to assemble.
Take the time and trouble to watch out for rigid thinking. Question our use of categories as we approach new problems. IMagine more creatively how others think different from us. Eschew reductive solutions and monocausal explanations. Watch out for our own prototypes and other people’s too. Step back from our situations, and think about how we think. We all want easy answers, which is what cognitive traps provide. Instead take a giant leap toward getting the things that matter most.
Make a realistic effort to slow our rush to judgment before all the relevant facts are in.
If we could grow more comfortable with the uncertainty around us… our daily blunders would not be as great. Remind ourselves and each other that our explanations are often based on insufficient understanding. Qualify our claims and moderate the solutions we adopt. Keep an open mind when we confront complex conditions.
Surest sign of a limited intellect is a closed mind. Having a limited intellect does not necessarily mean that such people are stupid. It just means that they are unable to stretch toward their full potential. Needlessly tragic way to live, especially when the condition is self-imposed.
Investigate whatever method works. Just imagine the complexity beyond.
To succeed as a historian, you must become acutely sensitive to how other people think, to discover why they did something in the first place.
Douglas Feith, assistant to the US defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, was one of the principal architects of the USA war in Iraq. Feith accepts that history is no substitute for sound judgment. “Expertise is a very good thing, but it is not the same thing as sound judgment regarding strategy and policy.”
A cognition trap is the mental framework that led you to a blunder.
Exposure Anxiety: Fear of being seen as weak
Causefusion: confusing the causes of complex events
Flatview: seeing the world in one dimension
Cure-allism: believing that one size really fits all
Infomania: Obsessive relationship to information
Mirror Imaging: Thinking the other side thinks like us
Static Cling: Refusal to accept that a fundamental change is under way (a changing world)
Blunder explains the ways in which all nations, businesses and individuals weaken themselves. Most of the time, when someone blunders, they neither collapse nor revolt; they just squander precious resources and set back their progress toward prosperity, security and strength.
George Orwell, pen name of Eric Blair, police officer in the British Empire, mid-1920s, lower Burma. Rampaging elephant. Blair was sickened by the things he regularly felt compelled to do and witness as part of the colonial police. Essay about the elephant was an allegory on imperialism: Shooting an Elephant. In Orwell’s case, he feared that by not killing the elephant, the Burmese would not respect his authority.
Counsel of Cleon
427 BCE, a ship sailed from Athens on a grave assignment
bound for the Greek island of Mytilene, a region that had revolted against Athenian rule
Cleon: urged Athenians to show no mercy
Diodotus: Haste and anger are, to my mind, the two greatest obstacles to wise counsel. Haste usually goes with folly; anger is the mark of a primitive and narrow mind. Anyone who maintains that words cannot be a guide to action must be either a fool or one with some personal interest at stake.
Matthew McKay, SF Haight Ashbury Clinic, clinical psychologist
shame factor - people who believe that others will not love them if they see them for who they truly are: normal flawed individuals. “If our façade is penetrated, if someone catches a glimpse of us, we feel exposed, emotionally naked.”
Shame produces tremendous ambivalence in personal relationships. Some people live with a powerful sense of their own inadequacy. These people are perpetually trying to avoid feeling humiliated and to prevent others from recognizing what they feel is their true lack of worth. Others try to hide from others their bursts of emotion, like rage, depression or panic. To conceal their shame, most people create masks to project an air of confidence, control or flawlessness. They usually try to appear supremely confident. They either act tough or present themselves as cool and quiet. The aim is “to keep the world from knowing about the pain and struggle inside.”
Exposure anxiety makes victims worry that if others perceive them as weak or soft, then their credibility will be undermined. They fear a domino collapse of the things they hold dear: status, authority, and aspirations for greater things. Generally, when someone admits their faults, the person often gains the respect and trust of others.
Causefusion mala aria (bad air)
best antidote: An open mind
Flatview any rigid perspective that constricts our imagination to just one dimension
Thinking in a binary mode: good or evil… positive or negative
Most complex problems contain shades of gray
Flatviews lead us to simplistic solutions
Like causefusion, flatview is a type of reductionist thinking.
Stems from a lack of empathy and imagination.
Although ignorance can hamper judgment, lack of empathy or imagination are factors.
Imagination permits us to speculate how life could be different for ourselves and for others. It enables us to consider values and behaviors at variance with our own without rejecting them out of hand. Empathy is imagination of the heart. It lets us feel what others might be feeling. It empowers us to step inside another person’s emotional body and experience gut reactions. Too often, policy makers overlook the critical factors of anger, resentment and hate. In a detached world of strategy and theory, they forget their enemies and allies alike are ruled as much by emotion as by raw power calculations. Superior force does win battles, but it rarely resolves the roots of war.
Kindlon and Thompson, Raising Cain
“People are looking for simple answers. But human behavior defies simple explanation, whether we’re talking aggression or tenderness. What is clear is that every behavior is influenced by multiple forces, from biology to community.
Slum: settlement characterized by the lack of clean drinking water, insecure tenancy, and fragile housing. UN estimates that 1 in 6 urban dwellers now reside in a slum. Increasing by 25 million per year.
Power of prototypes: successful politicians are skilled at exploiting them.
Infomisering occurs when people convince themselves that their positions are threatened if knowledge is spread.
Temple Grandin, autistic professor of animal science at Colorado State Univ.
Rain Man research
Much male-female relationships involve a struggle to see situations from the other’s point of view.
Robert Burns: To a Louse
O would some Power the gift to give us
To see ourselves as others see us!
It would from many a blunder free us...
Blunders are most likely to occur and we exacerbate them when they do, if we insist on absolute certainty. Mental flexibility dramatically helps accomplish missions and achieve goals.
Mental flexibility, willingness to question the majority view, rejection of reductionism, development of empathy and imagination -- require hard work. Building blocks of wisdom. They take conscious effort to assemble.
Take the time and trouble to watch out for rigid thinking. Question our use of categories as we approach new problems. IMagine more creatively how others think different from us. Eschew reductive solutions and monocausal explanations. Watch out for our own prototypes and other people’s too. Step back from our situations, and think about how we think. We all want easy answers, which is what cognitive traps provide. Instead take a giant leap toward getting the things that matter most.
Make a realistic effort to slow our rush to judgment before all the relevant facts are in.
If we could grow more comfortable with the uncertainty around us… our daily blunders would not be as great. Remind ourselves and each other that our explanations are often based on insufficient understanding. Qualify our claims and moderate the solutions we adopt. Keep an open mind when we confront complex conditions.
Surest sign of a limited intellect is a closed mind. Having a limited intellect does not necessarily mean that such people are stupid. It just means that they are unable to stretch toward their full potential. Needlessly tragic way to live, especially when the condition is self-imposed.
Investigate whatever method works. Just imagine the complexity beyond.
April 28, 2011
There's a certain kind of person who falls for books with covers like 'Blunder - Why Smart People Make Bad Decisions'. Alas, I am one of those people who am powerless to pass it by. Even if I had been able to resist the cover, I could not resist buying this book after reading page 1 ("By age 35, Thomas Alva Edison stood at the peak of his career.")
With all that magnetism, I still approach books like this with trepidation. In this case I enjoyed the book all the way to the end. Although Shore does invent cutsie names for his categories, the book is well written, contains a wide variety of examples, and moves smartly along. It's not too long and not too short.
The only shortcoming and criticism I have is that Shore mostly ignores how industrial and commercial interests encourage and promote many of the kinds of cognition traps he warns us about. There is a war going on, fought not with physical weapons like guns and bombs, but with propaganda tools. It is a well-funded war and is skilled at developing and deploying these cognition traps intentionally. If Shore discovers this and researches it, he could end up with quite the sequel.
With all that magnetism, I still approach books like this with trepidation. In this case I enjoyed the book all the way to the end. Although Shore does invent cutsie names for his categories, the book is well written, contains a wide variety of examples, and moves smartly along. It's not too long and not too short.
The only shortcoming and criticism I have is that Shore mostly ignores how industrial and commercial interests encourage and promote many of the kinds of cognition traps he warns us about. There is a war going on, fought not with physical weapons like guns and bombs, but with propaganda tools. It is a well-funded war and is skilled at developing and deploying these cognition traps intentionally. If Shore discovers this and researches it, he could end up with quite the sequel.
March 5, 2010
Shore did not convince me that the lessons we can learn from his stories will help us avoid blunders. His subtitle says that Blunder will tell us "Why Smart People Make Bad Decisions." I'm not sure that the book does that.
Shore does present some theories on that score. He talks about "causefusion," his coined word for confusion about causation. He talks about "infomisering" and "infoavoiding," two more coined words for keeping too much secret and for ignoring inconvenient truths. He talks about exposure anxiety, cure-allism, flatview, mirror imaging and static cling. A little too much pseudo-psychology from a historian for my taste.
If you like to read history, you will probably like Blunder. I do, and I did. Shore ranges over the centuries and the continents to pick his stories. He does a good job at picking them and telling them. Blunder is well worth reading as a history.
But is the book a good guide to making decisions? For me, not really. For others, I of course cannot say. I'd be interested to see what other readers think on that question.
Shore does present some theories on that score. He talks about "causefusion," his coined word for confusion about causation. He talks about "infomisering" and "infoavoiding," two more coined words for keeping too much secret and for ignoring inconvenient truths. He talks about exposure anxiety, cure-allism, flatview, mirror imaging and static cling. A little too much pseudo-psychology from a historian for my taste.
If you like to read history, you will probably like Blunder. I do, and I did. Shore ranges over the centuries and the continents to pick his stories. He does a good job at picking them and telling them. Blunder is well worth reading as a history.
But is the book a good guide to making decisions? For me, not really. For others, I of course cannot say. I'd be interested to see what other readers think on that question.
February 16, 2009
Excellent book about cognitive traps, especially touching on international development failures and how each situation has to be approached in a unique way, and must be understood from many perspectives. The developed world doesn't have all of the answers.
September 17, 2024
continuing my journey in my smart girl nonfiction era part 9 ✨
i will be forever impressed by how this book was able to absolutely hook a history hater like me
now hey, don’t get it twisted, i still didn’t really care about the history stuff, i never will, i totally did still skim and skip some parts (particularly the ones involving politics and economics, which were the majority), but i cared enough about most of them to mostly read through them. and that’s a huge feat in itself
this book used many different fields as the basis for examples to illustrate how each type of blunder can occur. there was much variety in this way. some field topics felt like they overstayed their welcome a little longer than others (*cough* politics and economics *cough*), but i still do appreciate the expansive approach. although there still could have been a bit more variety. basically, the actual information regarding the types of blunders discussed was very interesting and informative, but the example cases surrounding each of them were kind of hit or miss
this was also just so *shudder* american 😵💫
and seriously, holy shit why do all these books use male pronouns when just talking about people in general?? why are you continuously acting like women don’t exist, or worse, are not even considered to be people??! and women have names that go beyond ‘his wife’, by the way. let’s USE THEM PLEASE
”the surest sign of a limited intellect is a closed mind”.
i will be forever impressed by how this book was able to absolutely hook a history hater like me
now hey, don’t get it twisted, i still didn’t really care about the history stuff, i never will, i totally did still skim and skip some parts (particularly the ones involving politics and economics, which were the majority), but i cared enough about most of them to mostly read through them. and that’s a huge feat in itself
this book used many different fields as the basis for examples to illustrate how each type of blunder can occur. there was much variety in this way. some field topics felt like they overstayed their welcome a little longer than others (*cough* politics and economics *cough*), but i still do appreciate the expansive approach. although there still could have been a bit more variety. basically, the actual information regarding the types of blunders discussed was very interesting and informative, but the example cases surrounding each of them were kind of hit or miss
this was also just so *shudder* american 😵💫
and seriously, holy shit why do all these books use male pronouns when just talking about people in general?? why are you continuously acting like women don’t exist, or worse, are not even considered to be people??! and women have names that go beyond ‘his wife’, by the way. let’s USE THEM PLEASE
”the surest sign of a limited intellect is a closed mind”.
January 11, 2023
In an age of certainty, Zachary Shore is telling us to embrace uncertainty if we want to be smarter and not make so many stupid mistakes. He gives seven reasoning mistakes that cause us to be stupid and provides excellent, to-the-point examples of each from history, politics and business, and gives them each catchy names:
1. Exposure anxiety: fear of being seen as weak. (Only the weak fear being seen as weak, ironically.)
2. Causefusion: cause and effect confusion.
3. Flat view: seeing the world in one dimension, unable to open our minds to anything outside our narrow experience.
4. Cure-allism: having one cure we think will work for every situation.
5. Infomania: either sharing too much information or gatekeeping information so that it hurts our own cause.
6. Mirror imaging: assuming our rivals think as we do.
7. Static cling: refusing to acknowledge and accept a changing world.
Most of these are forms of reductionism--reducing complex situations to single views or ideas or causes. They are natural to how humans think and thus must be intentionally avoided.
His prose is easy to follow, clear and concise. This is an excellent discussion of material more people, particularly in today's I'm-right-you're-wrong atmosphere. Highly recommend.
1. Exposure anxiety: fear of being seen as weak. (Only the weak fear being seen as weak, ironically.)
2. Causefusion: cause and effect confusion.
3. Flat view: seeing the world in one dimension, unable to open our minds to anything outside our narrow experience.
4. Cure-allism: having one cure we think will work for every situation.
5. Infomania: either sharing too much information or gatekeeping information so that it hurts our own cause.
6. Mirror imaging: assuming our rivals think as we do.
7. Static cling: refusing to acknowledge and accept a changing world.
Most of these are forms of reductionism--reducing complex situations to single views or ideas or causes. They are natural to how humans think and thus must be intentionally avoided.
His prose is easy to follow, clear and concise. This is an excellent discussion of material more people, particularly in today's I'm-right-you're-wrong atmosphere. Highly recommend.
February 8, 2015
The author says that he will try to teach you think or at least help you avoid some of the common logical mistakes. And then he makes one, almost at the beginning of the book when describing one of the psychological counseling therapy. If he did not venture in the area which was not his domain, I might have believed him. However, as I am a psychologist I know exactly that his description of the health problems and his conclusions, especially the conclusion based on a simple event which may be influenced by a number of factors, do not make any sense. It seemed to me that the author is trying to force upon you some of his belief systems, but he is doing this very smartly, through cloaked rationality and feigned goodwill.
In the nutshell, the author takes some true and correct premises and gets to a wrong conclusion because he, intentionally or not, forgets to include all the relevant premises. For example, he should have known that psychologists and doctors take into account the differences between correlation and causality. He should have recognized that in principle pseudo psychologists are the ones who do not take into account complexity of the problems. I do however agree with him that we should keep an open mind, but we should put to tests our beliefs through applying scientific approach which is continuously combating all the traps of wrong conclusions, striving to further enhance methodological approaches and trying to get as close to the truth as possible.
In the nutshell, the author takes some true and correct premises and gets to a wrong conclusion because he, intentionally or not, forgets to include all the relevant premises. For example, he should have known that psychologists and doctors take into account the differences between correlation and causality. He should have recognized that in principle pseudo psychologists are the ones who do not take into account complexity of the problems. I do however agree with him that we should keep an open mind, but we should put to tests our beliefs through applying scientific approach which is continuously combating all the traps of wrong conclusions, striving to further enhance methodological approaches and trying to get as close to the truth as possible.
April 6, 2013
Terrible, terrible, completely content-free book. Here, I'll sum it up in one sentence:
"Bad decisions are those that turn out badly, good decisions are those that turn out well."
All of the terms and labels that are supposed to identify bad decision-making are vague enough to essentially translate to "don't make bad decisions." Frequently in the later chapters he'll be describing how someone made a great decision by avoiding the pitfall Shore is currently describing while in the back of your head you're thinking "Hold on... the person in this story is blatantly falling into some number of other pitfalls you're not talking about right now!" The book isn't about good and bad decision-making, it's just a list of some good and bad decisions.
In the end none of the book is helpful or explains anything. I guess I learned a few interesting facts about military endeavors?
"Bad decisions are those that turn out badly, good decisions are those that turn out well."
All of the terms and labels that are supposed to identify bad decision-making are vague enough to essentially translate to "don't make bad decisions." Frequently in the later chapters he'll be describing how someone made a great decision by avoiding the pitfall Shore is currently describing while in the back of your head you're thinking "Hold on... the person in this story is blatantly falling into some number of other pitfalls you're not talking about right now!" The book isn't about good and bad decision-making, it's just a list of some good and bad decisions.
In the end none of the book is helpful or explains anything. I guess I learned a few interesting facts about military endeavors?
October 27, 2020
Zachary Shore writes about mistakes we all make in cognition in his 2008 book Blunder. He states that there are seven main categories of error that people make. He uses examples from history, literature, popular culture, and other sources to illustrate his points. The book references a lot of 2008 events and the War on Terror to demonstrate these errors as well.
My main complaints were on the neologisms, but the book is still great. I understand why the author coined these words rather than spelling out what they were each time.
My main complaints were on the neologisms, but the book is still great. I understand why the author coined these words rather than spelling out what they were each time.
February 7, 2018
This book sounds like it'd be self-help-ish, and teach you ways to overcome cognition-traps. It doesn't really do that, so much as it shows examples of cognition traps and how they've played out throughout history. It's not a how-to, but it does present the opportunity to learn from history. After all, it is written by a historian.
October 27, 2018
This guy is good. Awesome read about common pitfalls and the root cause behind bad decisions. Basically a book about psychology from a historians perspective with lots of examples that psychologists dont typically give.
October 9, 2020
Woefully anecdotal
Really doesn’t provide the kind of broad tour d‘horizon needed to explicate this quirky topic. As a believer in the value of “lessons learned” I was very disappointed at this effort.
Really doesn’t provide the kind of broad tour d‘horizon needed to explicate this quirky topic. As a believer in the value of “lessons learned” I was very disappointed at this effort.
July 31, 2024
An absolutely fantastic look at how blunders are made by intentionally or unintentionally reducing complex problems to simple ones. Some of the military examples had my eyes glazing over (thus 4 stars), but there are many examples that I could relate to! Highly recommend.
February 25, 2020
Required q Reading?
This exposure of how we can avoid bad decisions is critical to success. The examples are some of the most vexing problems we face politically in the US. À
This exposure of how we can avoid bad decisions is critical to success. The examples are some of the most vexing problems we face politically in the US. À
June 17, 2025
I really enjoyed this book. If I were to describe it in a tagline it would be "cognitive biases in history".
I know it's a short review, but A+ book.
I know it's a short review, but A+ book.
September 8, 2015
Subtitle: Why Smart People Make Bad Decisions.
The author is a professor of national security affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School, and also at UC Berkeley. Obviously a man with a foot in two different worlds. Also, an historian with a deep knowledge of the history of blunders down through the ages. For this book, he categorizes them into several broad categories. It's kind of like a taxonomy of stupid decisions.
Here's a bit of a spoiler: this book is about the war in Iraq and how we got into it. I'm sure the author would disagree, and through the first 7 (of 8) chapters he gives numerous other examples of each of the kinds of blunders:
1) Exposure Anxiety: the fear of being seen as weak
2) Causefusion: confusing the causes of complex events
3) Flatview: seeing the world in one dimension (e.g. Cold War)
4) Cure-allism: believing that one size really fits all (e.g. our style of government is best for all cultures)
5) Infomania: the obsessive relation to information (e.g. wanting to wiretap everything and share nothing)
6) Mirror Imaging: thinking the other side thinks like us
7) Static Cling: refusal to accept a changing world
It doesn't take too much thought to imagine how these would all apply to the second Bush administration, and in particular to the war in Iraq. In some ways, it's like shooting fish in a barrel. So many types of errors were made in that administration that there is almost no point in examining it for lessons; anyone who does so will come away thinking "well there's no way I'd be that stupid".
More intriguing, therefore, are the many examples Shore gives of similar mistakes being made throughout history, both by relatively savvy U.S. presidents like LBJ and Dwight Eisenhower, and also by earlier figures like Cleon from ancient Athens, the Nguyen dynasty in Vietnam, and King Mongkut of Thailand.
In selecting and telling these historical examples of blunders, and the successful avoidance of blunders, Shore is clearly in his element. He is quite good at finding the right example for each point, and telling it with just the right amount of detail to illustrate without getting bogged down. He is, essentially, a good historian.
If I have a quibble with his work, it is in the few points where he moves from the descriptive to the prescriptive. In essence, all he can say about these traps is, "don't do these". But I doubt that any of these blunders can be avoided with a simple act of will. There are, I believe, exercises one can do to reduce the chance of making these kinds of blunders (e.g. pretend to have an opposing point of view for the duration of one private conversation), but Shore doesn't have much to provide us about these.
I would call this primarily a quibble, rather than a substantive criticism, because he is writing from the point of view of an historian, not a psychologist. Knowing a blunder when you see it occurring is considerably easier when you have knowledge of many examples from different periods in the past, and Shore does a good job of helping us to see how mistakes in very different times, cultures, and places often follow the same patterns. I think this will most certainly not be the last book to come out of the U.S. strategic thinker community, that attempts to deduce what want wrong in the run-up to the Iraq War (and the first several years of it); we are still parsing through what went wrong in Vietnam. Shore does a good job of showing what our missteps have in common with the blunders of ages and empires past. Figuring out how to not keep making them, is a book we are still waiting for.
The author is a professor of national security affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School, and also at UC Berkeley. Obviously a man with a foot in two different worlds. Also, an historian with a deep knowledge of the history of blunders down through the ages. For this book, he categorizes them into several broad categories. It's kind of like a taxonomy of stupid decisions.
Here's a bit of a spoiler: this book is about the war in Iraq and how we got into it. I'm sure the author would disagree, and through the first 7 (of 8) chapters he gives numerous other examples of each of the kinds of blunders:
1) Exposure Anxiety: the fear of being seen as weak
2) Causefusion: confusing the causes of complex events
3) Flatview: seeing the world in one dimension (e.g. Cold War)
4) Cure-allism: believing that one size really fits all (e.g. our style of government is best for all cultures)
5) Infomania: the obsessive relation to information (e.g. wanting to wiretap everything and share nothing)
6) Mirror Imaging: thinking the other side thinks like us
7) Static Cling: refusal to accept a changing world
It doesn't take too much thought to imagine how these would all apply to the second Bush administration, and in particular to the war in Iraq. In some ways, it's like shooting fish in a barrel. So many types of errors were made in that administration that there is almost no point in examining it for lessons; anyone who does so will come away thinking "well there's no way I'd be that stupid".
More intriguing, therefore, are the many examples Shore gives of similar mistakes being made throughout history, both by relatively savvy U.S. presidents like LBJ and Dwight Eisenhower, and also by earlier figures like Cleon from ancient Athens, the Nguyen dynasty in Vietnam, and King Mongkut of Thailand.
In selecting and telling these historical examples of blunders, and the successful avoidance of blunders, Shore is clearly in his element. He is quite good at finding the right example for each point, and telling it with just the right amount of detail to illustrate without getting bogged down. He is, essentially, a good historian.
If I have a quibble with his work, it is in the few points where he moves from the descriptive to the prescriptive. In essence, all he can say about these traps is, "don't do these". But I doubt that any of these blunders can be avoided with a simple act of will. There are, I believe, exercises one can do to reduce the chance of making these kinds of blunders (e.g. pretend to have an opposing point of view for the duration of one private conversation), but Shore doesn't have much to provide us about these.
I would call this primarily a quibble, rather than a substantive criticism, because he is writing from the point of view of an historian, not a psychologist. Knowing a blunder when you see it occurring is considerably easier when you have knowledge of many examples from different periods in the past, and Shore does a good job of helping us to see how mistakes in very different times, cultures, and places often follow the same patterns. I think this will most certainly not be the last book to come out of the U.S. strategic thinker community, that attempts to deduce what want wrong in the run-up to the Iraq War (and the first several years of it); we are still parsing through what went wrong in Vietnam. Shore does a good job of showing what our missteps have in common with the blunders of ages and empires past. Figuring out how to not keep making them, is a book we are still waiting for.
September 7, 2011
I don't want to seem like a loose type of lady, but not even a few pages in I was ready to take this delectable book to bed and get busy (you know you read in bed too, I'm not the only book slut here).
Opening the book with the perilous err of Thomas Edison in not listening to his employee by the name Nikola Tesla (you may have heard of him) sparks (twat a pun!) it off with some historical drama and doesn't look back. Mr Shore I may be taking you(r) books to bed more often if this keeps up.
Shore makes a fascinating case in the flatview perspective where he points out how america's involvement in removing the Iranian leader, Mossadegh for varying political reasons to keep Iran within control in worldwide affairs. In his place was put a tyrannical leader which oppressed Iran for decades later. And yet we find ourselves enraged about 9/11 and their possible involvement. 9/11 was horrific, but all too often we don't even look at the other side. America's hands are dirty too... But we're only seeing in one dimension.
I like Shore's examples for the most part, but there are times when the examples are extremely simple like he's talking down to you and times when they are so filled with psychology jargon that I'm sure several readers are just barely hanging by the coattails of. I mean, I dont get places in life on my brilliance you know. I put out.
Opening the book with the perilous err of Thomas Edison in not listening to his employee by the name Nikola Tesla (you may have heard of him) sparks (twat a pun!) it off with some historical drama and doesn't look back. Mr Shore I may be taking you(r) books to bed more often if this keeps up.
Shore makes a fascinating case in the flatview perspective where he points out how america's involvement in removing the Iranian leader, Mossadegh for varying political reasons to keep Iran within control in worldwide affairs. In his place was put a tyrannical leader which oppressed Iran for decades later. And yet we find ourselves enraged about 9/11 and their possible involvement. 9/11 was horrific, but all too often we don't even look at the other side. America's hands are dirty too... But we're only seeing in one dimension.
I like Shore's examples for the most part, but there are times when the examples are extremely simple like he's talking down to you and times when they are so filled with psychology jargon that I'm sure several readers are just barely hanging by the coattails of. I mean, I dont get places in life on my brilliance you know. I put out.
June 12, 2010
I enjoyed reading Blunder, with a few exceptions. I don't really like when authors make up terms when it isn't necessary. The chapter "Causefusion" left me confused. It was not clear to me whether the examples of treating depressive disorders using interactive roleplay was seen by Shore as helpful or not, and whether or not he felt it led to a deeper understanding of the "causes" of depression.
I enjoyed the other chapters much more where Shore used examples from history, obviously something he knows a lot about. In these examples key individuals had interactions that were unhelpful they fell into cognitive traps...mostly seeing someone as an enemy but not really understanding their "opponent" for all their complexities.
Overall, this book seemed to brush the idea that humans, even somewhat smart humans, don't deal well with complexity, and this leads to huge mistakes that can have long-lasting repercussions.
I enjoyed the other chapters much more where Shore used examples from history, obviously something he knows a lot about. In these examples key individuals had interactions that were unhelpful they fell into cognitive traps...mostly seeing someone as an enemy but not really understanding their "opponent" for all their complexities.
Overall, this book seemed to brush the idea that humans, even somewhat smart humans, don't deal well with complexity, and this leads to huge mistakes that can have long-lasting repercussions.
March 19, 2014
The book is well written, specific and easy to follow.
It talks about cognition traps faced by competent people, like blind spots and choking and not because of lack of skill/expertise. I think everyone suffers from them. There are (a) exposure anxiety (b) causation confusion (c) flatview (d) cure-allism (e) infomania (f) mirror imaging and (g) static cling.
I would think the book deserves 5 stars if only the author talks more on the solution part, which he modestly calls guidelines (jam-packed into the last chapter)...but perhaps no such 'manual' can be possibly written down (see how I avoid flatview above, lol..talk about learning and mental flexibility!). He calls it the building blocks of wisdom:
(1) challenge prevailing view
(2) rejection of reductionism (i.e. absolute certainty)
(3) mental flexibility (different from flip floppers)
(4) empathy and imagination.
I would be most interested to read books that deal more holistically with the 4 guidelines above
It talks about cognition traps faced by competent people, like blind spots and choking and not because of lack of skill/expertise. I think everyone suffers from them. There are (a) exposure anxiety (b) causation confusion (c) flatview (d) cure-allism (e) infomania (f) mirror imaging and (g) static cling.
I would think the book deserves 5 stars if only the author talks more on the solution part, which he modestly calls guidelines (jam-packed into the last chapter)...but perhaps no such 'manual' can be possibly written down (see how I avoid flatview above, lol..talk about learning and mental flexibility!). He calls it the building blocks of wisdom:
(1) challenge prevailing view
(2) rejection of reductionism (i.e. absolute certainty)
(3) mental flexibility (different from flip floppers)
(4) empathy and imagination.
I would be most interested to read books that deal more holistically with the 4 guidelines above
March 19, 2013
I enjoyed this. Fairly short, it is an engaging and easy read and is truly excellent in some parts. It is written for a general audience - and obviously targeted to the type of people that are reading a lot of Gladwell et al. - but uses a number of historical examples, mixed with cases from other fields. I may be the exception, but I would love to see this book written for a more limited audience, in a more academic form, with deeper consideration of historical cases. I think that would look something like parts of *Essence of Decision* and could really be excellent.
That said, this is a good book. My one minor complaint is that in two places, Shore's suspicion of reductionism and appreciation of complexity and uncertainty smells a little like patience for pseudoscience, and that was a bit offputting for me.
That said, this is a good book. My one minor complaint is that in two places, Shore's suspicion of reductionism and appreciation of complexity and uncertainty smells a little like patience for pseudoscience, and that was a bit offputting for me.
Want to read
October 17, 2015Zachary Shore, author of Blunder (Why Smart People Make Bad Decisions), was interviewed along with Jonah Lehrer, author of How We Decide, on KQED's Forum. An archived podcast of the interview is available here.
January 15, 2010
This book is written by a historian but it reads more like a self-help book. That makes it interesting in and of itself. The book is not simple to apply, but I can say it has helped me not to overreact to things, but it also makes me wonder if I have been idle to long. Its a book about real world wisdom that is a little disappointing because you feel like its to complicated to apply easily. Yet that is also where the wisdom of the book is found. In the fact that real wisdom does not come easily from complicated circumstances. It also seems to show how power corrupts. That one great stroke of wisdom does not necessarily lead to another stroke of wisdom. Each circumstance has to be worked through individually.
February 5, 2013
Identifies 7 cognition traps such as Exposure Anxiety (peer pressure), Flat World View (you don’t know what you don't know) and Cure Allism (it worked before, it will work again). Spotlighting and labeling thought patterns that lead to failure is valuable analysis, but since no one in the midst of making such an error of logic or judgement easily recognizes his own faulty reasoning, I think it would be more valuable to discuss how to not go down those beaten paths. The author states the obvious when he proclaims the anecdote as Empathy, Mental Flexibility and Imagination. The question is how? As a big fan of checklists, I might challenge decisions using this list. I would be interested in hearing any successful uses of this material. Anyone?
February 19, 2017
“Blunder” is a book about “cognition traps”, which are mental conditions that prevent us from understanding a situation clearly and lead us into making wrong decisions. In contrast to most books of this type, the author has taken many examples from geopolitics instead of relying only on business stories.
But I am not really sure that even if we know about cognition traps, we can prevent ourselves from being trapped by them. There will always be blind spots caused by our belief systems and the people in our circle of trust. The best way perhaps is to broaden our circle of information and trust and ensure that we are exposed to people and information sources that have different viewpoints. The greatest danger is certainty and the solution is doubt.
But I am not really sure that even if we know about cognition traps, we can prevent ourselves from being trapped by them. There will always be blind spots caused by our belief systems and the people in our circle of trust. The best way perhaps is to broaden our circle of information and trust and ensure that we are exposed to people and information sources that have different viewpoints. The greatest danger is certainty and the solution is doubt.
April 7, 2009
Another book I read because my husband had to read the book for class. I ended up reading it and giving him a summary. The author was his professor. I really enjoyed this book. I'm not much into reading histories and non-fiction, however I enjoyed how much I learned about history from this book. This book takes the way people think and make judgements and explains them in an historical setting. This is a great discussion book. While the author gives many history lessons explaining how people tend to think others are like themselves, or that people tend to think a solution for one applies as a solution for all, I kept thinking of how this related to everyday life.
February 8, 2010
I enjoyed the theories behind this book -- the different reason why things went horribly wrong. I loved the ancient history and the more current history. What I didn't like, and the reason I am just two or three chapters from the end, is that each chapter takes on the exact same structure. The first sentence in the first paragraph in each chapter serves the same purpose; so does the second; so does the third. The problem changes, of course, but I need something fresh and creative to keep my attention. I'm rating this three stars despite that, however, as the actual theory behind -- the cognitive traps leaders fall into -- is quite brilliant.
February 2, 2010
I enjoyed listening to this book while walking to and from work and hearing some interesting perspectives on mistakes important historical figures have made, basically because they couldn't change their way of thinking. "Cause-fusion," "mirror-imaging," "cognition traps," "infovoiding," etc. have inflicted some great blunders (Edison's distrust of AC, both Saddam Hussein's fall from power and the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Vietnam). Shore also focuses on some blunders avoided (the king of Siam).
It was certainly an interesting read, and while not my favorite book I've read recently, I think it was worth reading.
It was certainly an interesting read, and while not my favorite book I've read recently, I think it was worth reading.
August 24, 2011
So far I haven't read any books on human error I haven't liked. Blunder is no less absorbing for me than any of the others. It is different from the others I've read, in that the author is a historian rather than a psychologist or journalist. I like Shore's approach and style. Part near the end discussing U.S. Administration blunders entering and handling the war in Iraq may seem overtly partisan / political to some. Overall an excellent book that I would give 5 stars to except for parts of the final chapters were I felt the author showed his bias.
June 18, 2012
Actually quite and interesting history book. Mr. Shore identifies seven "cognition traps" that cause bad decisions and uses historical events to show their impact. The cognition traps were a bit vague and repetitive for my liking. They seemed to have a hindsight is 20/20 feeling to them. That part of the book seems to boil down to, "Have an open mind". The history on the other hand was quite enjoyable. For a person who was never that interested in history in school, the historical events described were both informative and entertaining.
April 26, 2012
Two words: cognition traps. Read this book and you'll most likely recognize many of these traps in your own thinking or in that of those around you. This book can be a part of the path towards awareness of the traps, and thus possibly allow you to avoid the problems they bring on. It's an easy, fast read with numerous good, short vignettes that illustrate the author's various traps. Recommended.
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