America is awash in debate, but it seems there is very little actual discussion or argument happening. Many talk by each other and simply become more entrenched in their positions, or they adopt more extreme, outrageous or nonsensical views. It does not help that politicians and pundits engage in the same kind of thing and seem to encourage it in others. In addition, television and radio broadcasts are full of it, propagating the noise, perhaps emphasizing one side or the other, but rarely providing useful new facts or analysis.
I see this on social
media a lot. I see a lot more people parroting or sharing a juicy
tidbit that they seem to think carries a point (the point is not always clear
and the facts are sometimes just wrong), but I rarely see someone address and
issue with humility, reason or
an admission of uncertainty.
Cartoonist Scott
Adams noticed it in his social media interactions, too. He
attributes some of this to the complexity of
the world we live in and the issues we deal with; human beings are not very
good and understating complexity. In addition, most people aren’t trained to
think productively to produce reasonable solutions. As he put it in his book Loserthink, “Despite evidence to the
contrary, we all use our brains.
But most of us have never learned to think
effectively.”
Loserthink is Adams’ term for unproductive, ineffective
ways of thinking. He generously thinks that people are not stupid, they are
just using unhelpful, unfruitful patterns of thinking. You will get nowhere trying to shame people
for stupidity, but you might get somewhere if you engage people in seeing how
ridiculous is loserthink, and how it produces divisions that generally don’t
benefit us (though it might benefit some).
Most of the book is devoted to identifying common types
of loserthink an how to think more productively. He draws on ways of thinking
from various professions and disciplines in which people are trained in
thinking and problem solving: psychologists, artists, historians, engineers, leaders, entrepreneurs and
economists.
Adams expresses some opinions about political and social
issues that are likely to be controversial to some. Rather than take as
evidence that you are right or that Adams is a dunce, take it as challenge to
think things through for yourself. Test yourself to see if you might be
engaging in loserthink. It might not change your mind, but it is likely to make
you more modest about your certainty in some area, more confident in the workability
of your solutions in others and generally more persuasive
because you have check yourself for loserthink and you can gently help other
address theirs.
Scott Adams also wrote
How to Fail at
Almost Anything and Still Win Big
If
you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in
Bored and
Brilliant by Manoush Zomorodi
The Checklist
Manifesto by Atul Gawande
Choosing
Civility by P. M. Forni
Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner
Histories and
Fallacies by Carl R. Trueman
How Not to Be
Wrong by Jordan Ellenberg
Six Easy
Pieces by Richard Feynman
The
Thinking Life by P. M. Forni
Adams, Scott. Loserthink:
How Untrained Brains are Ruining America. New
York:
Portfolio/Penguin, 2019.
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