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

by David McRaney

In creating a fantasy scenario where the world goes mad if the other person’s argument were to win, you have constructed a straw man. It is easy to see the downsides of and hard to defend, but it also isn’t what the other person was suggesting. Now the other person has to clarify his or her argument by assuring everyone he or she has no desire to see restaurant chains close because of this proposal. The other person now must argue against the feathery doomsday you’ve invented instead of just pointing out the reasonable ways people could be allowed to raise a few domesticated fowl.

What someone says and why they say it should be judged separately.

Guilt by association is often the ad hominem fallacy at work.

You tend to see people as characters and look for consistency in their behavior. This is usually a good thing, as it helps you sort out whom you can trust. Wondering whether or not someone can be trusted and wondering whether or not someone is telling the truth are two different things.

When you hear about a situation you hope never happens to you, you tend to blame the victim, not because you are a terrible person but because you want to believe you are smart enough to avoid the same fate.

The just-world fallacy helps you to build a false sense of security. You want to feel in control, so you assume as long as you avoid bad behavior, you won’t be harmed.

You want the world to be fair, so you pretend it is.

Success is often greatly influenced by when you were born, where you grew up, the socioeconomic status of your family, and random chance.

Accepting this does not mean those born poor should just give up. After all, not taking action guarantees not getting results.

Cheaters can ruin the system, not by themselves, but because the infectious nature of their gluttony is spread as people catch on to being shortchanged.

The public goods game suggests regulation through punishment discourages slackers.

Since you are always in your own head, thoughts about what it means to be you take up a lot of mental space.

Genetically, you and your friends are almost identical. Those genes create the brain that generates the mind from which your thoughts spring. Thus, genetically, your mental life is as similar to everyone else’s as the feet in your shoes.

you want the psychic to be real,

So true!

It works because people tend to ignore the little misses and focus on the hits.

When someone claims he or she can see into your heart, realize that all of our hearts are much the same.

As a primate, you are keenly aware of group dynamics. You are hardwired to want to hang out with people and associate yourself with groups. Your survival has depended on it for millions of years.

If you have ever called yourself a fan of anyone—a musician, a director, a writer, a politician, a technological genius, a scientist—you are experiencing the first stage of cult indoctrination.

THE MISCONCEPTION: Problems are easier to solve when a group of people get together to discuss solutions. THE TRUTH: The desire to reach consensus and avoid confrontation hinders progress.

The research shows that groups of friends who allow members to disagree and still be friends are more likely to come to better decisions.

If you associate something with survival, but find an example of that thing that is more perfect than anything your ancestors could have ever dreamed of—it will overstimulate you.

When a stimulus goes from good to great, it does not mean it truly is better than the normal version.

You depend on emotions to tell you if something is good or bad, greatly overestimate rewards, and tend to stick to your first impressions.

Your rational, mathematical, reasonable, and methodical mind is slow and plodding. It takes notes and uses tools. Your irrational, emotional, instinctive mind is lightning-fast.

mice base most of their behavior on the tug-of-war between risk and reward.

When you are determining if something is good, you are saying it is worth the risk of obtaining it.

Without emotion, it became incredibly difficult to settle on any one option.

When you see something as good, the bad qualities are played down. When you see something as risky, the harder it becomes to notice the benefits.

No human institution can efficiently function above 150 members without hierarchies, ranks, roles, and divisions.

I think “sell out” is yelled by those who, when they were selling, didn’t have anything anyone wanted to buy. —PATTON OSWALT

You are biologically driven to think highly of yourself in order to avoid stagnation.

That's My problem

If you were to stop and truly examine your faults and failures, you would become paralyzed by fear and doubt.

I am

To defeat feelings of inadequacy, you first have to imagine a task as being simple and easy. If you can manage to do that, illusory superiority takes over.

Research shows people believe others see their contributions to conversation as being memorable, but they aren’t.

The next time you get a pimple on your forehead, or buy a new pair of shoes, or Tweet about how boring your day is, don’t expect anyone to notice.

just about anything you see or hear will in some way influence your later behavior.

Venting your anger is an effective way to reduce stress and prevent lashing out at friends and family. THE TRUTH: Venting increases aggressive behavior over time.

I wish Tyler could see this

the volume as high as 8.5. The time-out group set it to 2.47. The people who got angry didn’t release their anger on the punching bag—their anger was sustained by it.

When you vent, you stay angry and are more likely to keep doing aggressive things so you can keep venting.

cooling off is not the same thing as not dealing with your anger at all. Bushman suggests you delay your response, relax or distract yourself with an activity totally incompatible with aggression.

Just by changing the wording, the memories of the subjects were altered.

Chances are, you pick your battles and let a lot of things slide.

you conform because social acceptance is built into your brain.

You need friends because outcasts are cut off from valuable resources.

Never be afraid to question authority when your actions could harm yourself or others.

Food, of course, is a powerful reward. It keeps you alive.

Just driving the car from point A to point B is a complex performance that becomes automatic after hundreds of hours of practice.

This finally brings us back to the third factor—extinction. When you expect a reward or a punishment and nothing happens, your conditioned response starts to fade away.

Just before you give up on a long-practiced routine, you freak out. It’s a final desperate attempt by the oldest parts of your brain to keep getting rewarded.

These are all extinction bursts—a temporary increase in an old behavior, a plea from the recesses of your psyche.