Think Like a Rocket Scientist: Simple Strategies You Can Use to Make Giant Leaps in Work and Life

by Ozan Varol

The mind doesn’t follow the facts. Facts, as John Adams put it, are stubborn things, but our minds are even more stubborn. Doubt isn’t always resolved in the face of facts for even the most enlightened among us, however credible and convincing those facts might be. The same brains that empower rational thinking also skew our judgments and introduce subjective contortions. Our tendency toward skewed judgment partly results from the confirmation bias. We undervalue evidence that contradicts our beliefs and overvalue evidence that confirms them. “It [is] a puzzling thing,” Robert Pirsig writes. “The truth knocks on the door and you say, ‘Go away, I’m looking for the truth,’ and so it goes away.”