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

You are always looking back at the person you used to be, always reconstructing the story of your life to better match the person you are today. You have needed to keep a tidy mind to navigate the world ever since you lived in jungles and on savannas. Cluttered minds got bogged down, and the bodies they controlled got eaten. Once you learn from your mistakes, or replace bad info with good, there isn’t much use in retaining the rubbish, so you delete it. This deletion of your old, incorrect assumptions de-clutters your mind. Sure, you are lying to yourself, but it’s for a good cause. You take all you know about a topic, all you can conjure up on the spot, and construct a mental model.