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The Art of Thinking Clearly

Rolf Dobelli,

อรพิน ผลพนิชรัศมี (Translator)

3.85 · Rating details · 25,329 ratings · 2,348 reviews

In engaging prose and with practical examples and anecdotes, an eye-opening look at human reasoning and essential reading for anyone with important decisions to make.

Have you ever:
• Invested time in something that, with hindsight, just wasn't worth it?
• Overpayed in an Ebay auction?
• Continued doing something you knew was bad for you?
• Sold stocks too late, or too early?
• ...more

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Hardcover, 384 pages

Published May 14th 2013 by Harper (first published January 1st 2011)

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Lists with This Book

Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

The Art of Thinking Clearly by Rolf Dobelli

Fooled by Randomness by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

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May 23, 2013 Bob rated it did not like it

Nice packaging and design may give this book an aura of credibility. They certainly worked; I skimmed a few pages of it and bought it, thinking I would learn important lessons that I wouldn't get from other books about critical thinking. Alas, that won't be the case since the book reads like bull in a china shop; Dobelli massacres the art of critical thinking and puts in its place a Frankenstein doppelganger called cynicism and uncritical use of anecdotes.

Let's take for example: Lesson# 19 "The Nice packaging and design may give this book an aura of credibility. They certainly worked; I skimmed a few pages of it and bought it, thinking I would learn important lessons that I wouldn't get from other books about critical thinking. Alas, that won't be the case since the book reads like bull in a china shop; Dobelli massacres the art of critical thinking and puts in its place a Frankenstein doppelganger called cynicism and uncritical use of anecdotes.

Let's take for example: Lesson# 19 "The Dubious Efficacy of Doctors, Consultants and Psychotherapist: Regression to Mean" in which Dobelli includes anecdotes about an investment adviser at a major bank who does 'rain dance' whenever his stocks performed badly. The anecdote claims that "things always improve afterwards". Then, Dobelli juxtaposes that anecdote to the one about a young handicap-12 golfer who would book time with an instructor to improve his game. This time, Dobelli doesn't mention any mumbo-jumbo thing the golfer does so we can safely assume that the golfer did try to learn new techniques or improve upon his weaknesses so he can play better. Then, he put in other details for the chapter and wraps it all under 'regression to mean'. Well, really? "Rain Dance" claimed to "always" work comes under "regression to mean" and is considered similar to people practicing and improving their skills through hard work? I mean, sure, the adviser's behavior is an example of 'cognitive bias' but does it really come under that category (rather than one of the other 98 in the book)?

The reading of this book will produce a sort of gut-feeling nausea that usually tell you something is wrong. Sure enough, you'll find plenty of 'not quite right' details in the book such as the use of anecdotes that don't fall in the right categories, the lack of footnotes, and critical analysis of the anecdotes. There's also the strange section of "A Note on Sources" that neither Dobelli nor his editor and agent bother to weave into the chapters as properly written end notes. Then, comes the interspersing of critically right and critically wrong information in each chapter; this book is the 'Da Vinci Code' of books on critical thinking.

The book seems credible and right but it's neither. It's even more frustrating when I think I've spent CAD$16.99 on someone's sloppily written personal-notes-turned-into-commercially-sold book. Readers will get more out of books on the basics of critical thinking rather than this one. In fact, the book is dangerous since it "poisons the well" on so many subjects it fails to critically discuss about. The only usefulness of this book is in challenging readers to use their critical thinking skills to identify its biases and fallacies.

On that note, I really have to say: I don't understand the reason many people praise and give good reviews for this book. ...more

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Jun 28, 2013 Kevin rated it really liked it

If you had lots of time (and interest in becoming aware of your cognitive biases), you should read Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman, Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely, everything by Steven Pinker, Fooled by Randomness and The Black Swan by Nassim Taleb, and others. But since not everyone has the time and interest, instead read The Art of Thinking Clearly. This book has 99 short chapters (all of them are almost exactly 2.5 pages) that cover the major hiccups in our thinking process. A ...more

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Mar 16, 2014 Manoj Arora rated it really liked it · review of another edition

My learning from the book:
(1) Never underestimate the hard work and lower probability of success, just because we are shown more successful people than many more actual failures
(2) Confirmation bias is the mother of all misconceptions. It is a tendency to interpret new information so that it becomes compatible with our existing theories. Warren Buffet has seen people losing money with this because they ignore facts which contradict the theory in the mind of the investor. Dis confirming evidence My learning from the book:
(1) Never underestimate the hard work and lower probability of success, just because we are shown more successful people than many more actual failures
(2) Confirmation bias is the mother of all misconceptions. It is a tendency to interpret new information so that it becomes compatible with our existing theories. Warren Buffet has seen people losing money with this because they ignore facts which contradict the theory in the mind of the investor. Dis confirming evidence must be seeked out to beat this theory. e.g. what is next in the sequence 2-4-6-8-...
(3) Calamity of Conformity - If you ever find yourself in a tight unanimous group, you must speak your mind, even if your team does not like it, even if it means risking expulsion from the warm nest.
And if you lead a group, appoint someone as devil's advocate. He or she will not be the most popular member of the team, but definitely the most important.
(4) Induction - Send an email to 10,000 people with stock market prediction by dividing them into 2 groups - telling reverse prediction to each group. Prediction for one of the groups will come true. Send a new prediction to the 5,000 whom you predicted correctly earlier - again after dividing them into 2 groups...carry on like this, and the last 100 would consider you as a genius. People get inducted into a decision based on history without thinking logically.
(5) Loss Aversion - The fear of losing something motivates people more than the prospect of gaining something of equal value.
(6) When it comes to compounding, don't trust your intuition - you have no idea how powerful it is
(7) It is not what you say, but how you say, that's important. 98% Fat Free product seems more healthy than a product with 1% Fat.
(8) If you are not a part of the solution, you are definitely a part of the problem. There is no 3rd category of passive onlookers.
(9) Follow your passion even if you have to do away with part of your income for that
(10) Whenever you are dealing with averages, be careful of the distribution behind it. A Bill Gates monthly income in a group of 50 ordinary citizens can give an extremely misleading average.
(11) Money does not always motivate. It works as a motivation only in companies where employees work for only money.
(12) Money comes wrapped in emotions. Monet won incidentally, as against earned through hard work, is more likely to be spent erratically - though it is illogical because the money is the same. This can be prevented if you have a clear financial plan with you.
(13) Self Control drains your energy, and therefore you need a lot of energy if you want to exercise self control.
(14) Presence of something is more noticeable and valued than its absence. e.g. presence of disease than its absence. OR getting off a plane and not noticing that it did not crash.
(15) NEWS is to mind, what sugar is to body, appetizing, easy to digest - and highly destructive in the ling run ...more

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Sep 29, 2013 Thomas Harris rated it did not like it

Plagarism.

It can be useful as a starting point for a list of cognitive biases. However, it is mere plagarism of other texts.

Dobelli uses examples taken directly from other sources, changes the names of characters and wording slightly, and uses them as if they were his own. Why not just quote from the original text?

Also, some of his examples are so diluted and simplified that they are actually WRONG. One of the most glaring ones is his water treatment example for "Neglect of Probability". A: redu ...more

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Apr 13, 2014 Kara Babcock rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2014-read, economics, non-fiction, essays, owned, science

This book is the dead tree equivalent of a BuzzFeed post. Its title could be “I Got 99 Cognitive Biases But a Psychology Degree Ain’t One.” Or maybe not.

Rolf Dobelli enumerates 99 thinking errors, or cognitive biases, in The Art of Thinking Clearly, dispensing as he does tips for leading a more rational, less error-prone life. Anyone who has done even the least amount of reading in this subject will recognize many of the cognitive biases that Dobelli describes here. Unlike most popular cognitive This book is the dead tree equivalent of a BuzzFeed post. Its title could be “I Got 99 Cognitive Biases But a Psychology Degree Ain’t One.” Or maybe not.

Rolf Dobelli enumerates 99 thinking errors, or cognitive biases, in The Art of Thinking Clearly, dispensing as he does tips for leading a more rational, less error-prone life. Anyone who has done even the least amount of reading in this subject will recognize many of the cognitive biases that Dobelli describes here. Unlike most popular cognitive psychology books, however, this book makes no central argument and does not examine these biases within a larger context. It is literally just a list, with extended descriptions, of the biases. At times, Dobelli occasionally ascribes the bias to some evolutionary origins, and he will quite often cite some interesting experiments conducted by psychologists (he is not, by the way) that revealed or provided insight into the bias in question. In his introduction Dobelli explains that the book began life as a personal list kept for his own benefit, and I can believe that.

Dobelli covers 99 biases in 300 pages, so he can’t spend much time on each bias. Not every bias is as interesting or worthwhile as the next. But from the very beginning, I was frustrated by the brevity of each chapter. Just as I read something that intrigued me, Dobelli shepherded me on to the next bias like some kind of frantic tour guide worried that we won’t have time to see all of the art. Please stay with the tour, no cameras.

I wanted to be mollified by dazzling prose, but I had to settle for somewhat dull attempts at wit. I wanted to be satisfied with lucid, if too concise, explanations of these biases, but I had to settle for somewhat tepid attempts to demonstrate these biases without getting drawn into the bigger discussions of the cognitive and behavioural science that underlies them. Dobelli ties his own hands here, to poor effect.

To be fair, it is clear that Dobelli is well-read in this field. He has done his research (even if the “note on sources” section frustratingly places the sources under headings by the bias name but not the chapter number, and there is nary an endnote to be seen). It’s clear, judging from the number of times he quotes from or references Thinking, Fast and Slow, that he has been heavily influenced by the work of Daniel Kahneman. In fact, one could say that The Art of Thinking Clearly is little more than attempt to distil the biases and only the biases mentioned in Thinking, Fast and Slow and similar such books.

The thing about blog posts like this is that they seldom linger in one’s short- or long-term memories. They are space-filling exercises, attempts to get eyeballs to the page and clicks on ads. It doesn’t work well in book form; I don’t, as a general rule, enjoy books of lists all that much. There are some exceptions for lists compiled and enumerated in a hilarious manner, but that isn’t the case here. Yet with the cognitive biases removed from a larger context and reduced merely to a checklist of errors to avoid, Dobelli robs them of their greater meaning.

So if you’re truly interested in this subject matter, why not just skip The Art of Thinking Clearly and go read Thinking, Fast and Slow? I have. It’s much better than this book and much more informative, and it’s written by an actual psychologist. This book, like the BuzzFeed post it resembles, is a pale imitation of something more meaningful and accomplished. Imitation flowers have their place, but life is too short to waste it on imitation books.

...more

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Jun 02, 2018 Iman Shabani rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: read-in-2018, non-fiction, worth-only-one-read, self-development

If you're looking for a book to help you get ahead, or improve you as a human being, don't look here; but if like me, you want to see how a book of such reputation with no scientific ground, or even much common sense, can be so popular among some people, get this book and start reading.

(I tried not to include any spoilers, so read with peace of mind if you have it in your to-read list.)

The fact that this is a terrible book became known to me very early in the book, however I decided to keep read ...more

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Jun 14, 2014 Pooja Kashyap rated it it was ok

Shelves: philosophy

I bought this book just because I saw Taleb eulogizing the book right on the book cover and so I fell for it. If you have read The Black Swan, The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb then I would strongly re-commend do NOT go for the book but if you haven’t dipped into the ocean of Taleb’s thoughts then this book is for you. More or less, The Art of Thinking Clearly harps on the same line of thoughts, as is the case with Black Swan. Each chapter in the former case is like bu ...more

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Mar 28, 2013 Blue rated it it was ok

FYI: I won this book from goodreads Giveaways, but that in no way influenced my review.

The Art of Thinking Clearly presents a bunch of anecdotal evidence to support commonly known fallacies in logical thinking. You know that hindsight is 20/20, we cling to our narratives, and think we'll be like the models in makeup ads if only we buy their product, plus a bunch of other semi-obvious ways in which we end up making bad decisions (or poorly rationalized flukes that still turn out okay). This book ...more

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May 22, 2014 Daniela rated it it was ok

It's a PLAGIARIZED anthology of cognitive errors. The biases it presents are, mostly, well summarized from a series of books from Taleb, Ariely, Kahneman and others(which, as shown by Taleb in the link, Dobelli used without permission). The author made no research on any of the items, but merely put forward the work of others. He does say so in the beginning, that his book comprises of research from other people, but it doesn't absolve him of copying.

Other than that, I consider it a good mix of ...more

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Sep 22, 2018 Yevgeniy Brikman rated it liked it

This book is a list of 99 common thinking errors and cognitive biases. Some of these you've probably heard many times before, but many will likely be new. I found it a quick, fun, interesting read, but it has 3 major flaws:

1. Because it's just a list of 99 disconnected items, with no common "story" to tie them all together, you will forget the vast majority of it shortly after finishing the book.

2. The book will tell you about the thinking errors, but not the solutions. Granted, there is value ...more

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Sep 08, 2014 Zhiyar Qadri rated it it was amazing

Absolutely In love with this books, I fulfils its title. A good way of reading it would be highlighting the clearest example in each fallacy in addition to the conclusion. I would say at the end sit down with a pen and paper and try to apply each to your life to consolidate the learning, make a list of all and in important decisions make sure they are error free.
A passage from the epilogue
"Even highly intelligent people fall to the same cognitive traps. Likewise, errors are not randomly distri ...more

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May 21, 2013 Daniel Taylor rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: psychology, great-books-of-the-21st-century, business

Entrepreneurs profit from understanding cognitive biases in two ways: first, you’ll make rational decisions; second, you’ll be an effective marketer.

The Art of Thinking Clearly exposes 99 cognitive biases – simple errors all of us make in our everyday thinking – and shows us how to become rational thinkers.

Author Rolf Dobelli brings a fresh perspective because of his unique skill-set. He’s a Swiss writer, novelist and entrepreneur. And he’s founder of an invitation-only society of the most disti ...more

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Jun 04, 2017 Ali Sattari rated it liked it

Shelves: psychology, skepticism

Good wrap-up on cognitive errors and shortcuts.

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Feb 08, 2014 Andrew Wright rated it it was ok

Enjoyed somewhat, but ultimately couldn't finish. What otherwise is an entertaining collection of findings from social psychology and other thinking and human behavior focused disciplines is ruined by the author's strange compulsion to "explain" the biases he identifies with random and entirely unconvincing musings about evolutionary origins. It's not enough to explain that we overweight the potential for loss over the potential for gain, which is interesting. Dobelli is compelled to clarify tha ...more

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Sep 24, 2012 Marc rated it it was ok

Shelves: psychology

Nice book, extremely readable because of the 52 three page-chapters. The fallacies are very recognizable, often open doors, though Dobelli uses a lot of expensive words (action bias, endowment bias etc). All in all a beautifull collection of the dubious motives behind human actions.
But...Dobelli very often refers to practices in the world of management and financial investments; that says something about the public Dobelli is writing for. Most of the behaviour he describes is to a high degree in ...more

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Aug 09, 2020 Brent rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: reference, on-hand, nonfiction

A very useful overview of the biases and fallacies that impede clear thinking with emphasis on acquiring a variety of mental models.

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Apr 19, 2020 Shadin Pranto rated it liked it

Very popular book on psychology. In Bangladesh this book is sold like cake. The essence of Ralph Dobley's book is logic. Nothing in the world is beyond logic. Any decision or work of yours and mine can be explained with logic. However, the author has shown that we always live in different kinds of illusions. Even the logical explanation of our own wrong-doings makes our minds stand still. Ralph Dobley has proved the futility of those logic.

Those who examine everything on the basis of reasoning ...more

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Feb 15, 2018 Abhijeet Jain added it

Recommends it for: everyone

Shelves: self-help, non-fiction

The book is a collection of small chapters, each focusing psychological wrongdoings.

I loved a few chapters while others felt vague. Overall I loved it, mostly because author gave sufficient psychological experiment results to support his arguments. The author also made sure to give due credit to books and people who're ideas he used.

A lot of people have said in the reviews that this book is just a miniature of "thinking slow & fast".
Well, I am yet to read it, so can't comment on it.

You can find ...more

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Nov 25, 2015 Verylazydaisy marked it as dnf

I DNFed it at 25%. Not worth finishing.

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Aug 04, 2020 Paulina rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction

A poor man’s “Thinking: Fast and Slow”.

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Sep 29, 2017 Steph rated it really liked it · review of another edition

The Art of Thinking Clearly has great insight in every day thinking errors and how we can avoid them (I mean that is what the book is about lol) I read it over a span of several months, every few days a chapter, and while reading I kept thinking "yes! exactly, this is fantastic I have to adjust my thinking process and remember this" but now that I have finished it I can barely remember anything I have read :D It's sad really. But nonetheless a really interesting read. Maybe it is a good idea to ...more

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Mar 16, 2018 Mario the lone bookwolf rated it really liked it

Shelves: 0-humanities

Good, sometimes too unilaterally formulated a summary of known research results

Please note that I put the original German text at the end of this review. Just if you might be interested.

Where other authors could already put together a whole book with a handful of the topics covered, along with detailed consideration of each aspect, the essentials are distilled out briefly and succinctly on three pages each. Moreover, explain the essence of various psychological phenomena related to human evoluti ...more

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Jan 17, 2021 Sanarya Saud rated it liked it

Long short story, the book is about cognitive errors we make and got to the point where we don't realize they're 'mistakes' but most of what he mentions is already discussed, so nothing life changing. What I loved about this book is how the author managed to make it feel like we're sitting together and he's 'philosophizing' everything around us. It gets unnecessarily long at some points but it's fun, I guess. I loved how he mentioned that entrepreneurs and successful business leaders write books ...more

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Jan 06, 2016 Benoit Lelièvre rated it it was ok

Left me a tad disappointed. Not that the knowledge in there is wrong or displayed arrogantly, but it's superficial and rather gimmicky. Nothing in this book is going to change the way you're thinking about anything. In fact, most people I believe are aware of cognitive dissonances, but are just defeated by them.

It was a pleasant read overall, but it would've benefited from having less chapters and going more in depth about the art of thinking about certain issues the proper way. In fact, this bo ...more

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Aug 13, 2017 Linh P. Truong rated it it was amazing

Lots of bad comments have been made, mostly regarding the book's originality. Now name me three things that r completely authentic top of ur mind. R they really?
Back to this phenomenal piece, love the way how words of wisdom concretely laid out in 99 chapters. Thus personally no doubt a highly recommended one or "a fireworks show of insights into how our minds work" (Iris Bohnet, Harvard Kennedy School)
"We think like lawyers, crafting the best possible justification for a predetermined conclusio ...more

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Mar 13, 2014 Moumeeta rated it really liked it

A good collection of fallacies inherent to our thinking. It does get repetitive at times. The human evolution examples seem a bit stretched at times. it's succinct descriptions of an exhaustive list of human errors makes it a good handbook. Aims to list out the points and that it does. I think it's a good text book - it covers the subject matter well. My thirteen year old son found it interesting! That's a strength - it should make for an easy read for anyone. Reason definitely needs advocates l ...more

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Jul 13, 2015 Michael Huang rated it liked it

If you read some social science studies, chances are you already knew most of the biases the book covered. On the balance, not a huge waste of time if you read it cover to cover, and quite safe to skip.

Incidentally, this book came up in blinklist. I find the summary to be perhaps much more preferable to the whole book. So if these biases (eg, confirmation bias, group think, decision fatigue and paralysis) aren’t completely new concepts, the blinklist summary is a far better option.

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Jan 26, 2015 Franziska rated it did not like it

Shelves: 2015-readings

Banal. Nothing a psychology freshman wouldn't learn in his first week. ...more

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Feb 25, 2018 Raoum Bani rated it it was amazing

A wake-up call or a reminder of how flawed our thinking can be.

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Nov 18, 2019 Ananya Ghosh rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Recommended to Ananya by: Tushar Kochar

Shelves: worth-re-reading, psychology, favourites, brain, 2019, primer

A favourite read of this year. It is a list of 99 cognitive biases in crisp chapters and with engaging examples. Good primer to Kahneman's work. ...more

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About Rolf Dobelli

Rolf Dobelli

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Rolf Dobelli is a Swiss author and businessman. He began his writing career as a novelist in 2002, but he is best known internationally for his bestselling non-fiction The Art of Thinking Clearly (2011, English 2013), for which The Times has called him "the self-help guru the Germans love". ...more

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“Whether we like it or not, we are puppets of our emotions. We make complex decisions by consulting our feelings, not our thoughts. Against our best intentions, we substitute the question, “What do I think about this?” with “How do I feel about this?” So, smile! Your future depends on it.” — 43 likes

“If 50 million people say something foolish, it is still foolish.” — 33 likes

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