Loserthink: How Untrained Brains Are Ruining America

by Scott Adams

My objection to the slippery slope argument is that everything is a slippery slope until it isn’t.

The option to share highlights to Goodreads doesn’t always appear. It seems when I click on highlights, then scroll up and down, it often appears then. I’m using Kindle app on iOS now.

whenever you are talking to an expert in any realm, be aware that the next expert is likely to tell you the work done by the last expert looked like a monkey pounding a keyboard with a banana. And the expert after that will be just as rough on the prior expert, all the way to infinity.

German mathematician Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi—whose parents were not good at naming babies—was known for his maxim that it is often easier to solve a problem if you express it as its opposite.1 Famous investor Charlie Munger, best known as Warren Buffett’s business partner, uses a version of this method to look at investments; instead of asking how they might succeed, he first tries to understand what failing would look like in this situation, and how to avoid it.2

Afghanistan will probably be at war with itself, with the help of various outside entities, for another hundred years. But most of that will stay within its borders. And it is reasonable to assume plenty of underdeveloped countries will have civil wars and wars with neighbors, complete with genocides and atrocities. But as countries in that category develop their economies and become tied into the global economic system, their odds of war will plummet.

Doing things wrong is an excellent way to figure out how to do things right.

And the best response a person can make to a mistake follows this pattern: Fully acknowledge the mistake and its impact. Display genuine-looking remorse. Explain what you plan to do to make amends. Explain how you plan to avoid similar mistakes.

often find myself in online debates with people who have a good grasp of the short-term trade-offs of a decision but they overlook the long-term picture. When that happens to you, rather than pointing out the omission, ask your critic to describe what the future would look like under their preferred plan. If they struggle to do so, it will weaken their confidence in their opinion.