Over the past couple of years, I read a lot of books regarding how humans think and their irrationality. Some of them are: Predictably Irrational, Influence, Thinking Fast and Slow and Factfulness. All of these books are great. They show how we make decisions and why they’re often not rational at all. If you haven’t read any of them, I highly recommend to add it to your reading list.
The original school of economics thought stated that humans are “rational agents”. It means that they make decisions after analytically and rationally thinking about all the possibilities. This sounds reasonable until you
We as humans have so many things going around us all the time that we cannot possibly spend the time thinking about every little detail. Imagine what would happen if we started pondering about how to pick up a fork, lift a mug, place our leg when walking, etc.
We usually have unconscious rules of thumb about what decisions to make. This comes from ancient times, where we needed to react quickly to survive. Nowadays, we like to think of ourselves as rational (as that’s what’s perceived as valuable in the economy today), but in reality, that’s just not the case.
The books mentioned at the beginning of this post dive deep about our heuristics (“rules of thumb”) and biases. They’re showing us how efficient (but irrational) our brains actually are. We make choices, which require the least mental effort but, not necessarily the most rational ones.
Thinking Fast and Slow is almost like a textbook that talks about all of our biases. I highly recommend starting with this specific book if you want to dive deeper and get the foundations. If you want an easier read, that will completely change your worldview – consider Factfulness.
If I were to tell you one reason why you should read these books, it’s this: y