The Art of Thinking Clearly

This is a great book recommended for every one who do take decision, especially decision made on others behalf and decisions which impact many people. It demystifies a lot of myths and brings clarity to a lot of "whys?". Take time to read it and probably use if for reference. The chapters are short and the examples are spot on. Only be careful not to let is confuse or digress you... by analytical :)... its not a book for way of life...but a looking glass.

The book is easy to digest. It has flavors of enlightenment, sprinkled with some history and facts, buried in a lot of snark and sass and top off with helpful todos and words of the wise.

An intellectual morsel to be taken with a few grains of salt.

I am a fan of Dobelli, having read his (free) essay "Avoid The News" (at his web site), some of which is background for the current book. Dobelli does a good job introducing the layman to the multitude of cognitive errors that our minds are prone to. He provides some explanation of the evolutionary survival value of some of these (e.g. groupthink) and notes that while many of them should be discarded for modern civilization, others still serve a positive purpose.

Dobelli classifies and illustrates clearly errors in thinking. He makes the work of many thinkers accessible and fun. His writing style is exemplary and his book is a splendid illustration of the art of thinking clearly.

Great content that'll last a lifetime (which was why I bought the hardback).

Unfortunately, these books are printed with a tiny font that's uncomfortable to read without reading glasses; hence the 4-star rating instead of 5.

This book is my new favorite, and is a "must-read" for anyone who wants to improve cognitively. Dobeli tackles common errors in thinking, and suggests by making oneself aware of these mistakes, one might be able to train oneself to think better. While not academic, this book is still written for the more curious of minds. I find myself referencing the advice frequently.

Many know that Wikipedia has a "mistake" list of potential cognitive errors and biases that links to nearly infinite mistakes these poor brains can make! This is like the little book of 100 things that can go right vs. the 2,000 page book of clinical maladies that can descend upon us each unsuspecting day.

This read is truly an eye-opening joy ride! Even though the author claims happiness is genetic and not to expect too much, hey, get this, it's enlightening AND entertaining! How is it better than the plethora of error books and self help sites out there, as well as Wiki's extensive list? Wow, no comparison. Dobelli uses short, punchy "chapters" that are almost just a few paragraphs to explain, define, exemplify and illustrate each cognitive trap, error and bias-- astonishing. The humor is dry but everywhere, especially his many "aha" insights about how these errors helped us keep from being killed as cave folk but do us disservice now. He wryly shares that the guy who questioned the herd mentality probably didn't contribute to the gene pool if he did so while all his buddies were running from a lion! This author's sense of humor is too contagious.

As you get through the first few "chapters" your mind will be reeling with the insights-- they really are more subtle than the fun tone suggests at first. Then, you look at the 300 pages that remain and realize how PACKED this book is with eye opening insights-- wow. This is one of those rare books after which you never look at the world, your life, or your relationships the same, EVER again!

Even if you've studied these mistakes and biases for years, or are an expert in the field (an "authority?" oh, oh), Rolf's "multiple angle" style of illustration, story telling, examples, descriptions and taxonomy really drives the trap home in deeply understandable, gut ways you might not have experienced with other authors. A dry topic like exit barriers is generalized with an error about sunk costs, and examples given for everything from relationships to habits, never mind investments! Though he is a friend of Taleb's, don't believe the hype that this is a "business" or investing book-- its examples and applications range much farther than that universe, down to our daily unconscious choices and patterns.

Highly recommended for anyone who enjoys seemingly light page turners that turn out to be much deeper and life changing. NOT a self help tome, in fact he makes great fun of self helpers, showing them the covariate mirror where they ignored their own genetics and luck to get there, having nothing to do at all with the "techniques" they are now espousing and promoting. Best of all, this is a guy who continually makes fun of himself and tells many stories about his own "stupidity" -- subtly teaching us he's caught on to the subtlest trickster of all-- ego.

Library Picks reviews only for the benefit of the store shoppers and has nothing to do with the store, the authors, manufacturers or publishers of the items we review. We always buy the items we review for the sake of objectivity, and although we search for gems, are not shy about trashing an item if it's a waste of time or money for the store shoppers. If the reviewer identifies herself, her job or her field, it is only as a point of reference to help you gauge the background and any biases.

I am interested in the concept of "self help" books. Most of them follow the formula - "do as I say, and you'll be happier, wealthier, more productive, etc."

This book is a departure, a welcome departure, from such reads. It is a true "self help" book, with the emphasis on self, because the author does not seek to stuff ideas down your throat. Instead, he presents a series of short, cogent articles that clearly illustrate fallacies and shortcomings in our thinking today. By supporting them with real life examples, he provides the thinking reader with some new ammunition in cutting through some of the "fluff" that defines modern communications.

I have really taken my time reading this book, and now that I am at the end I will start again. Each short chapter deserves your full attention if you are to get the most from it. You will find yourself asking - but how does this idea relate to a previous one that seems, at first glance, to be contradictory? Helpfully, the author calls out any apparent paradoxes and explains their coexistence quite rationally - I found that I was not dissatisfied with any of his explanations.

Back to the "self" aspect - the end of each chapter contains some small advice to assist you in dealing with the fallacy that has been exposed in the chapter, but I find that the greatest value is in relating the subject matter of the chapter to your own experience before reading the advice - you will get much more out of it that way.

My final piece of advice? Read this book like a child using a playground - dip in again and again and again. You are never really finished reading it - instead I recommend turning it into a habitual read - something you continually refer back to.

I am looking forward to being able to see more clearly as a result of applying the lessons in this book.

It is written in short paragraphs and has plenty of common analogies, without falling into the corny style of books such as "chicken soups" or other motivation books. This books reminds us of simple ways to think about things. Even the author focuses on the finance market and gives tips on how to make decisions before investing, it is good to refresh our habit of how we owe to think about life in general.

This is an easy to read book with short chapters on different aspects of the way we see things and how we can avoid thinking certain ways. Easy to understand, but also a very thought provoking book at the same time. Well worth a read. Some humorous and some serious topics. All entertaining.

I got to know so many of my thinking errors! Although most of them are not implementable in our lives but each of us definitely get some suggestions applicable. One such advise I implemented was to stop following news (current affairs) on daily bases. This proved to be great energy and time saver for me as well as my thinking is more clearer these days!

This is an easy to read book with short chapters on different aspects of the way we see things and how we can avoid thinking certain ways. Easy to understand, but also a very thought provoking book at the same time. Well worth a read. Some humorous and some serious topics. All entertaining.

I got to know so many of my thinking errors! Although most of them are not implementable in our lives but each of us definitely get some suggestions applicable. One such advise I implemented was to stop following news (current affairs) on daily bases. This proved to be great energy and time saver for me as well as my thinking is more clearer these days!

First skimmed through this in a bookstore in Zurich - it left an indelible impression, so I returned to the states and waited for it to be released.

Great for those who care about how we think and process our decisions.

This book is a veritable treasure nd I consider this to be amongst the top-10 life skills books I have ever read. I am amazed at how good Dobelli 's quality and simplicity of concept and expressions are.

Mr. Dobelli gives some very interesting points. He says himself this is not a self help book. I liked it because it is a very easy read. The short chapters means I can read one or two at a time when I'm on break or waiting in line.

Thinking clearly is very important to me. I have the handicap of a relatively high IQ and therefore I tend to think that because I am smart I think clearly. Years ago I started on a journey to clear out fallacious thought patterns and still pursue that goal. I was aware of almost all of the patterns in this entertaining and well presented book but a few caught my attention and I observed myself falling for them. Thanks for the correction!

This book nearly lost me before it got really started with a very debatable fact mentioned early in the book. However, I must say, I am glad I stuck with it. What I appreciated most about this book was the very simple, succinct summary Dobelli has managed to achieve of many of the other books and research he mentions (and I have read). This book provides a great introduction to our thinking fallacies. Each chapter is very short, thus, it is also extremely suitable for students new to the topic, or to first language English speakers. It should be mandatory reading for bureaucrats and managers at all levels. It is not a self-help book although I wish we were all better thinkers and better communicators.

This book was not what I expected. The content was the same and I loved the book, but I did not know I was buying a smaller copy. The book I received was little more than a paperback book. I was expecting full size hardcover book.

Bought this impulsively on my Kindle, expecting a huge dose of tips on improving my thought process.
The book delivers anecdotes and examples of various theories on clear thinking.
A good read but I expected more.

This is a lucid book with clear examples showing how easily we can make wrong decisions . There are examples of muddled thinking with which many are familiar ; and many others not so common . Easy to read and a must for decision makers everywhere.

We all heard about our limits. But what do I do with it? Is there anything more than "we are stupid?"

Here comes Rolf, with the complete answer.

All the ways how our mind blunders. Its practical effects and what to do. And all in a highly readable format.

It helps a lot that it was written originally as a weekly column to the most popular newspaper in Germany (...). So each chapter stands alone, and is highly readable.

I remember seeing this book in Swizerland as #2 or 3 on the bestseller list for a whole year. I am convinced he will get the same feedback in English.

This is a superb read. Nowhere else will you find an easy-to-read, easy-to-understand, complete list of thinking errors. While some of the examples and errors are not new (some we've heard from Kahneman, Pinker, Ariely, etc) Dobelli explains them in plain language. This book helps you to circumnavigate the most dangerous thinking errors in your life and your career. This is the strength of this book: Dobelli excels at explaining complicated ideas. A very applicable and entertaining read, indeed.

First, let me tell you what this book is not:

It is not "art", neither "thinking", neither "clearly". In fact, let me quote from the "Introduction":

"This is not a how-to book. You won't find "seven steps to an error-free life...Although this book may not hold the key to happiness, at the very last it acts as insurance against too much self-induced unhappiness...If we could learn to recognize and evade the biggest errors in thinking...we might experience a leap in prosperity."

Fair enough.

So the title should be "How to recognize mistakes that cause us to act irrationally".

Then you would search for the "Art of Recognition". How do I prevent myself from committing these errors, how do I recognize that my thinking is indeed influenced by cognitive errors, fallacies, biases? Here you find no help. Say, you finish reading the book and then face a decision that could be crucial, yet you instinctively sense (gut feeling is at work here) the danger of a thinking error. Would you quickly go over every one of the 99 listed biases to check for these errors? What kind of quick check could you use to ensure you are acting rationally? What would warn you? What is the art?

Second, let me tell you what this book is:

A list of 99 fallacies, biases that influence our thinking and actions (i.e. "personification, confirmation bias, hindsight bias, etc.) and in fact, if the title would be "Fallacies and biases" I would give it a five star.

But shortly after you start reading this book, you realize that it is indeed "just" a list of errors, with brief explanations of their nature, occurrence and evolution. Yes, there are the stories and facts to back them up. Yet there is not a hint to know or recognize the risk when you face them.

At the end the book is a good read. But the practical use of such lists is quite limited. It is a database, but not an algorithm.

Although some things in this book are interesting I don't feel like the author imparts that information very well or in a memorable manor. I usually have excellent retention for every book I've read but this one I noticed is just kinda thrown out there. He's writing this as short essays rather than a blueprint on analyzing one's thoughts and how to approach things differently. The chapters to me aren't really chapters they're like place holders in an essay. I would often have to go back and re-read things throughout this book because I wouldn't even remember what I was reading. I haven't finished this book because I find it both boring and poorly written. As such its hard for me to focus and even understand what I've been reading in it so naturally I don’t remember it.

Although some of the ideas have been taken/ borrowed from other eminent authors. This is a nice & useful compilation of majority of the thinking errors. These have been explained in a very simple manner which anybody can understand easily

It's not a cooking recipe, it's not a ten step guide, and yes, sometimes the author reads like a jerk or makes the same mistakes he is pointing out, but in general it's a well written book, it is simple, digestible and has a lot of useful things, it make you think and discuss ideas, so I liked it... I would read another book from the author...

Save your money. Go to Wikipedia and look up "cognitive bias" and "cognitive biases" and branch out from there. This book starts out with a small stumble by leading off on the topic of Survivorship BiasThis book starts out with the stupidity right from the start. For example the second chapter is "Does Harvard Make You Smarter? - Swimmer's Body Illusion." He in effect claims that swimming won't improve your physique and going to Harvard and graduating won't help become better educated. Another example is in chapter 9 "Don't Bow to Authority...." He claims that no economists predicted the timing of the 2008 financial crisis, except Nouriel Roubini and Nassim Taleb. Well the fact of the matter is that a lot of economists warned of it and many of them predicted the timing as accurately as Roubini and Taleb. I guess maybe he mentioned them to butter them up after plagiarizing them. Even so there's only some small reason to give any of them a lot of credit since they could easily be beneficiaries of survivorship bias that he railed against in the first chapter. It goes on and on like this.

I'll tell you one thing, I almost always do a little more research before buying a book like this, but this time I got lazy. Hopefully I won't make that mistake again soon.

I'm about half way through, and it's okay. But I refuse to read anymore out of principle after seeing two very compelling accusations from Nassim Taleb (Black Swan Theory) and Christopher Chabris (Invisible Gorilla) that several parts of the book was plagiarized from them without attribution. You can google "Dobelli plagiarize" or maybe the links below work. Judge for yourself:
[...]
[...]
I feel duped and wish I could get my money back.

There are a number of problems with this book. It is not at all about how to think, it is about mistakes that are made by those who do not think clearly -- which is pretty much the only thing that should be credited as actually thinking. It is 306 pages of anecdotes supported by research reports that have not been critically evaluated and the author's frequent use of the theory that our thinking is based on the lives of those who lived 50,000 years ago. I have heard of people blaming their parents, but I have some trouble jumping to the conclusion that people are tempted to buy a Mercedes because if you go back a couple of thousand generations you'll find the reason behind our desire. If it is the source, why not go back 50 million years to prior life forms?

What you will find here is 99 separate short chapters on things that might adversely effect thinking, he says. He notes, I should warn you, that he began writing these things down because he found he could not think clearly. I prefer Francis Bacon, who noted just four "idols" that we must avoid if we are to think well. Bacon was good at thinking.

For all that, it is a pleasant read -- tiny snippets of research anecdotes and other little stories. I read it all the way through, even when the author's thinking -- or his reporting -- or the editing -- or the translation from the original German -- made it look as if he wasn't thinking clearly.

We don’t know what makes for a successful investor or the key to happiness, however we do know what does not. In the words of Warren Buffett: “Charlie and I have not learned how to solve difficult business problems. What we have learned is to avoid them”. The method of illuminating a topic by stating what it is not is called via negativa and is one adopted by Rolf Dobelli in this very readable anthology of cognitive errors. Dobelli is a Swiss author and entrepreneur with a keen interest in business, psychology and the shortcomings of human cognition. Dobelli founded Getabstract.com and is the founder of Zurichminds.com as well as a member of Edge.org. Through his best selling book he has become a respected public intellectual. Some of the readers will recognize Dobelli from his essay entitled Avoid News which is a manifesto arguing the limited value of reading the news in making sense of the world. One of the key individuals Dobelli credits in his book is Nassim Taleb and followers of Taleb are likely to enjoy and derive value from this book.

This is not an investment book in the strict sense of the definition. However to the extent that good investing requires a disciplined application of rational thought, this book offers a rigorous checklist of possible cognitive errors to avoid. Dobelli is not so naïve as to argue that we can rid ourselves of our cognitive errors. But just like a good investor needs to make the right judgments a little over 50 percent of the time to generate alpha, if we can eliminate at least some of our faults, we are already well ahead of the pack. The book draws heavily on the most recent findings from psychology, behavioral economics and neuroscience to develop an extensive list of cognitive fallacies. There are lots of good books out there on the flaws in our thinking, Daniel Kahneman, Robert Cialdini, Dan Ariely and Nassim Taleb. This book while perhaps not as comprehensive or theoretical as other books in the category, makes up for it with the breadth of the issues covered, the lucid structure, colorful stories, lively examples, and catchy subtitles. Many of the topics the book covers I falsely assumed (overconfidence) I had internalized from reading Kahneman, Ariely or Taleb. However most became much more obvious and applicable to me after reading this book.

The book is a comprehensive collection of 99 short chapters with an introduction and prologue, each covering a single cognitive flaw. There is no discernable order to the chapters nor does the author attempt to rank errors by their severity or importance (context determines that). Each chapter is no more than 2-4 pages. Topics include issues such as Selection Bias, Overconfidence Effect, Domain Dependence but come with poignant titles such as Why You Identify with your Football Team: In-Group Out-Group Bias. At times the book reads as if passages have been lifted from other sources but this is inevitable when you cover so many topics that have already been written about by others.

This book covers popular but highly relevant topics of psychology and behavioral economics. The value in the book is not in the depth with which issues are covered but by its breadth. Those who have internalized Taleb and Kahneman are unlikely to get much out of this book, other than some entertaining narratives and seeing so many issues covered in a single treatise. After reading the book and getting caught up in the Halo Effect (chapter 38) I downloaded the The Art of Thinking Clearly app ($1.99), which I do not recommend doing. Nevertheless the book is hard to put down and is one to pick up from time to time to remind ourselves of our fallibility.

This is a review by investingbythebooks.com

It may seem a bit strange that I give this book a two star rating and not more than that. The book is fascinating in many ways, and it does a great service in revealing many of the fallacies that we live by. This is, however, a part of our character. This is us!

There is enough human stupidity that exists in the world, and the 99 bite sized chapters do expose many of the myths that we live by. Yet, the book does not reveal anything of the art of thinking clearly. This is a clever title, and this is one of the reasons I bought the book.... one of the great fallacies of our times. If the book was called, The Book of Human Fallacies, I probably would not have bought it.

Yet, there is enough in the book to enthrall, and keep you engaged. The writing style is simple and down to earth. I like this.

The book does not teach people about decision making. The author just rumbles without provide any corrective action. Buy this book was the biggest mistake of my life. The author should stop writing books because he is an awful writer

The book title could have been titled "Flaws and Fallacies in Reasoning"; however that would sound too academic. So the publisher chose "The Art of Thinking Clearly" probably because it sounds very much like "The Art of Clear Thinking" (1951) by Rudolf Franz Flesch who had made a mark in teaching the world how to think and write in plain English.

Anyway this subject book stands by itself for helping people become more conscious of their subconscious tendency to follow certain truisms prevailing in society. It takes time to digest all that the writer says because the book is written in anecdotal style with many stories to tell to back up his points. His points may not always be correct but what counts is that he documents certain paths of reasoning that we should be aware of. The reader can then work out his own thinking from there.

This book was indeed interesting as well as intellectual, but I felt the author relied a little too heavily on evolutionary psychology when trying to explain the "why" we do things. At first, it seemed he was dissing religious faith when talking about the Cognitive Reflection Test and other addresses upon rationality. He does, however explain that there is no true way to "disprove" the existence of God and even offers credits and quotes to past religious thinkers and even Christ, so that told me Dobelli was fairly open-minded agnostic at worst. He presents questions and offers explanations based on mostly solid rationality. However, explaining why we do the things we do, he leans toward the weaker science of evolutionary psychology,because, let's be honest: religious faith would be the only other alternative, and that's not really rational. Ordinary it would seem to make more sense, if our primitive brains were still hard-wired to the caveman "hunter-gatherer" mentality and thus prepared to pay attention and run from that long-extinct saber-tooth tiger stalking us. But one thing I noticed he never addresses is something that no doubt had a tremendous impact on our thinking and how we have learned to survive: microbes that caused illness and even death, like the flu virus or intestinal infections, or even sexually transmitted diseases. Our caveman ancestors most certainly had to have dealt with sickness in many forms, so how did they defend against "predators" they could not see or even feel at first? How did they figure that mate discrimination decreased some embarrassing, life-threatening, or even infertility-causing infections? How did they know not to eat certain plants or mushrooms that could kill, except "the hard way"? How did they come to find that after obtaining control over fire, that cooked meat lessened occurrences of vomiting and diarrhea?
Either way, the book was clearly thought-provoking, but it did have some flaws, like any work would. The author does address the fact that he does not seek to live an error-free life, nor should any of us, but just to think alternatively and maybe you can make wiser decisions accordingly.
I'd give this some book some credit on it's intellect, but was a little biased towards "the Rational" a bit, and forgets to address some important aspects of anthropological history.

The book does not teach people about decision making. The author just rumbles without provide any corrective action. Buy this book was the biggest mistake of my life. The author should stop writing books because he is an awful writer

The book title could have been titled "Flaws and Fallacies in Reasoning"; however that would sound too academic. So the publisher chose "The Art of Thinking Clearly" probably because it sounds very much like "The Art of Clear Thinking" (1951) by Rudolf Franz Flesch who had made a mark in teaching the world how to think and write in plain English.

Anyway this subject book stands by itself for helping people become more conscious of their subconscious tendency to follow certain truisms prevailing in society. It takes time to digest all that the writer says because the book is written in anecdotal style with many stories to tell to back up his points. His points may not always be correct but what counts is that he documents certain paths of reasoning that we should be aware of. The reader can then work out his own thinking from there.

This book was indeed interesting as well as intellectual, but I felt the author relied a little too heavily on evolutionary psychology when trying to explain the "why" we do things. At first, it seemed he was dissing religious faith when talking about the Cognitive Reflection Test and other addresses upon rationality. He does, however explain that there is no true way to "disprove" the existence of God and even offers credits and quotes to past religious thinkers and even Christ, so that told me Dobelli was fairly open-minded agnostic at worst. He presents questions and offers explanations based on mostly solid rationality. However, explaining why we do the things we do, he leans toward the weaker science of evolutionary psychology,because, let's be honest: religious faith would be the only other alternative, and that's not really rational. Ordinary it would seem to make more sense, if our primitive brains were still hard-wired to the caveman "hunter-gatherer" mentality and thus prepared to pay attention and run from that long-extinct saber-tooth tiger stalking us. But one thing I noticed he never addresses is something that no doubt had a tremendous impact on our thinking and how we have learned to survive: microbes that caused illness and even death, like the flu virus or intestinal infections, or even sexually transmitted diseases. Our caveman ancestors most certainly had to have dealt with sickness in many forms, so how did they defend against "predators" they could not see or even feel at first? How did they figure that mate discrimination decreased some embarrassing, life-threatening, or even infertility-causing infections? How did they know not to eat certain plants or mushrooms that could kill, except "the hard way"? How did they come to find that after obtaining control over fire, that cooked meat lessened occurrences of vomiting and diarrhea?
Either way, the book was clearly thought-provoking, but it did have some flaws, like any work would. The author does address the fact that he does not seek to live an error-free life, nor should any of us, but just to think alternatively and maybe you can make wiser decisions accordingly.
I'd give this some book some credit on it's intellect, but was a little biased towards "the Rational" a bit, and forgets to address some important aspects of anthropological history.

Dobelli has not just embraced the short and punchy style of blog articles, he has bought it flowers and asked it to move in with him. The information is generally good, but each chapter reads very much like the one before it: give an example of a logical fallacy, state the fallacy, cite a study or two (and maybe another example and related fallacy), then wrap it up with a couple sentences that are sometimes sort of funny.

As another reviewer pointed out, the title is all wrong. Unlike Thinking Fast and Slow or Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, there is no attempt to identify base principles or provide well reasoned advice or strategies for actually thinking clearly. Unlike Freakeconomics (and its lesser derivatives), it lacks quirkiness. This makes it read like a know-it-all at a party pointing out how everyone is making mistakes of reason.

But it is a likable know-it-all who can be fun in small doses. Great for when you want to read for five or ten minutes while waiting for your train or right before bed.

Left me a tad disappointed. Not that the knowledge in there is wrong or displayed arrogantly, but it's superficial and rather gimmicky. Nothing in this book is going to change the way you're thinking about anything. In fact, most people I believe are aware of cognitive dissonances, but are just defeated by them.

It was a pleasant read overall, but it would've benefited from having less chapters and going more in depth about the art of thinking about certain issues the proper way. In fact, this book reminded me of another book called The Laptop Millionaire which preaches to turn someone's knowledge into a product (i.e a book) as a get-rich quick method. Because I don't think Rolf Dobelli really knows the subject in depth...

As I began to read this book I enjoyed it and appreciated the concept - short chapters each dealing with some logical fallacy or cognitive bias. I thought the book would be along the lines of work by Malcolm Gladwell, explaining in simple terms ideas about how we think (as the title would suggest).

However as I read the chapters I found many of the examples to be very poor, as they did not illustrate the fallacy or bias. Some examples bordered on annoying, as they delved into some mundane experience had by the author, that was not illustrative of the chapter. Perhaps something was lost in the translation. While the writing is generally fine, there are a few awkward terms and passages that a good editor would have revised.

There are many books on 'why we do dumb things', covering our numerous cognitive biases and the like, but this book may be the best of them. In short and engaging chapters, Dobelli covers a very large range of such biases, illustrating them with plenty of examples. But don't think that simply reading and understanding this book will do the trick for you. You'll need to read, apply, re-read, re-apply, and repeat ad infinitum. That prospect may be somewhat discouraging, but doing less dumb things will be worth it, maybe even transformative for your life. This book is a must-read (and apply) if there ever was one.

I studied psychology as a major for many years before quitting for health reasons and was a bit puzzled when someone gave me this book as a gift - it had blown their mind. To me it felt like giving an entomologist a copy of "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" - except that it would actually be based on original thought, unlike Dobelli's work. I never heard of the man before, at university it was the legendary Daniel Kahneman that "blew our minds" with his original research.
I guess Dobelli benefits greatly precisely those cognitive errors he talks about in his book - people are lazy, flawed and easily swayed thinkers. It is also not going to change anything for you unless you are prepared to spend the rest of your life fighting your inner cognitive miser. But let's be honest, few people are capable of stopping themselves and thinking "oh, I was about to make a fundamental attribution error, let's rethink it based on objective, rational facts"...

Couldn't get past the first 20 pages. Kind of cyncical, negative, but yet redundant at the same thing. The book wasn't what I thought it would be. I suggest reading the first few pages before buying it. I couldn't since I bought it between flights at the airport :/

I have a keen interest in recognizing logical fallacies as a defense mechanism against the relentless lies in the media, academia, "science", etc... that are perpetuated nonstop today. A good part of this book, I feel, does an effective job at defining these fallacies and has sufficient supporting examples. However, many of the supporting examples using the book are callous at best, and may be offensive to some (the one example of a beauty queen settling down with an average guy as being a life changing mistake was exceptionally irritating).

Additionally (and I think in the interest of his chosen one and half page chapter structure) many of the chapters are just a slight variation of a concept already covered earlier in the book. He could have avoided this by allowing himself a little more leeway in chapter length.

All in all the book is ok - a three star book - there's plenty to learn hear, and if your careful in your application of the concepts you won't turn into the pedantic Ted Moseby type. I gave it an extra star because many of the examples pull no punches when dealing with big academia.

This is a terrible book - a mishmash listing of ideas that have been written about in much better books, much more clearly, by much better people. It is as if Mr. Dobelli took all of these ideas from others, cut the examples into separate pieces, and then randomly gave them each their own chapter. And to add to the confusion, came up with some "scientific" term for each version. While throwing in quotations that he ascribes to people whose origins in fact are lost in the mist of time. (Apparently Donald Rumsfield is famous for saying that there are known knowns and unknown knowns, but this is only a restatement of an older caution: to be aware of what we know we know/what we know that we don't know/ what we don't know that we know; what we don't know that we don't know.)

He drops names of "colleagues" who in fact are incensed by his plagiarism of ideas. And he constantly drops his own name, as a best-selling novelist (in Switzerland, maybe, but not so best-selling that the books are on the store!). And then he throws in some biases of his own in passing, without thinking at all clearly about the ramifications of these "principles".

The book is so irritating because it is such an important subject, but because it is so cut-up, disorganized, and underdeveloped, at the end, one knows less than one did before reading it.

IMHO, the author had explained fluently over 95% of the 100 individual cognitive error/bias/fallacy with only 3 pages of interesting stories/elaboration and eye catching chapter titles/headlines, which includes:-

Why you should visit cemeteries - Survivorship Bias
Does Harvard make you smarter? - Swimmer's Body Illusion
If fifty million people say something foolish, it is still foolish - Social Proof
Why we prefer a wrong map to none at all - Availability Bias
It's not what you say but how you say it - Framing
Be wary when things get off to a great start - Beginner's Luck
Decide better - Decide less - Decision Fatigue
Why there is no such thing as an average war - The problem with averages
Hurts so good - Effort justification
You have no idea what you are overlooking - Illusion of Attention
The Stone Age Hunt for Scapegoats - Fallacy of the Single Cause

In short, for those who want to learn more about their natural weaknesses, this is definitely a very good start. For those who already have read over three psychology books, please give this a pass.

p.s. Below please find some of my favorite passages for your reference.

When it comes to pattern recognition, we are oversensitive. Regain your skepticism. If you think you have discovered a pattern, first consider it pure chance. If it seems too good to be true, find a mathematician and have the data tested statistically. Pg9
The following experiment shows how much effort it takes to question your own theory. A professor presented his students with the number sequence 2-4-6. They had to calculate the underlying rule that professor had written on the back of a sheet of paper. The students had to provide the next number in the sequence to which the professor would reply "fits the rule" or "does not...".....Most students suggested 8....10, 12.....The students concluded, "The rule is to add two to the last number." The professor shook his head. One shrewd student tried a different approach. He tested out the number -2.....-24, 9, -43...Apparently he had an idea, and he was trying to find a flaw with it. Only when he could no longer find a counterexample, the student said, "The rule is this: The next number must be higher than the previous one. " The professor turned over the paper.....pg20-21 (on "Confirmation Bias)
The real issues with stories: They give us a false sense of understanding, which inevitably leads us to take bigger risks and urges us to take a stroll on thin ice. Pg39 (on Story Bias)
After receiving the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1918, Max Planck went on tour across Germany. Wherever he was invited, he delivered the same lecture on new quantum mechanics. Over time, his chauffeur grew to know it by heart. " It has to be boring giving the same speech each time. Professor Planck. How about it do it for you in Munich? You can sit in the front row and wear my chauffeur's cap. That'd give us both a bit of variety. " Planck liked the idea, so that evening the driver held a long lecture on quantum mechanics in front of a distinguished audience. Later, a physics professor stood up with a question. The driver recoiled, "Never would I have thought that someone from such an advanced city as Munich would ask such a simple question! My chauffeur will answer it." According to Charlie Munger, there are two types of knowledge. First, we have real knowledge. We see it in people who have committed a large amount of time and effort ot understanding a topic. The second type is chauffeur knowledge - knowledge from people who have learned to put on a show. Pg46-7
True experts recognize the limits of what they know and what they do not know. If they find themselves outside their circle of competence, they keep quiet or simply say, "I don't know." Pg48
Large selection leads to discontent. How can you be sure you are making the right choice when two hundred options surround and confound you? The answer is: You cannot. The more choice you have, the more unsure and therefore dissatisfied you are afterward. Pg63 (on Paradox of Choice)
Don't cling to things. Consider your property something that the universe (whatever you believe this to be) has bestowed to you temporarily. Keep in mind that it can recoup this (or more) in the blink of an eye. Pg69 (on Endowment Effect)
The more uncertain the value of something - such as real estate, company stock, or art - the more susceptible even experts are to anchors. Anchors abound, and we all clutch at them. The SRP printed on many products is nothing more than an anchor. Sales know they must establish a price at any early stage - long before they have an offer. Pg91
There are two kinds of forecasters: those who don't know and those who don't know they don't know. - Harvard economist John Kenneth Galbraith pg120
The action bias is accentuated when a situation is new or unclear. When starting out, many investors act like the young, gung ho police officers outside the nightclub: They cant yet judge the stock market so they compensate with a sort of hyperactivity. Of course this is a waste of time. As Charlie Munger sums up his approach to investing: We've got.....discipline in avoiding just doing any damn thing just because you can't stand inactivity. Pg129
All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone. - Blaise Pascal pg130
Self-serving bias: If you got an A, you were solely responsible; the top grade reflect your intelligence, hard work, and skill. And if you are flunked? The test was clearly unfair. Pg134
Never leave home without "because". This unassuming little word greases the wheels of human interaction. Use it unrestrainedly. Pg157
In a complex world, distribution is becoming more and more irregular. We will observe the Bill Gates phenomenon in ever more domains. How many visits does an average website get? The answer is: There are no average websites....In such cases, mathematicians speak of the so called power law. Pg165
If someone use the word "average", think twice. Try to work out the underlying distribution. If a single anomaly has almost no influence on the set, the concept is still worthwhile. However, when extreme cases dominate, we should discount the term "average". Pg166
The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge. And next time you are confronted by a rival, consider killing him - not with kindness but with reams of data and analysis. pg178
A mild form of effort justification is the so called IKEA effect. Furniture that we assemble ourselves seems more valuable than any expensive designer piece. Pg180
We are the descendants of quick decision makers, and we rely on mental shortcuts called heuristics. One of the most popular is the affect heuristic. An affect is a momentary judgment; something you like or dislike. The word gunfire triggers a negative effect. The word luxury produces a positive one. Pg198
Whether we like it or not, we are puppets of our emotions. We make complex decision by consulting our feelings, not our thoughts. Against our best intentions, we substitute the question, "What do I think about this?" with "How do I feel about this?" So, smile! Your future depends on it. Pg199
Alternative Blindness. We systematically forget to compare an existing offer with the next best alternative. Pg213
Hire people who are better than you, otherwise you soon preside over a pack of underdogs. The so-called Duning-Kruger effect applies to such Z-players: The inepts are gifted at overlooking the extent of their incompetence. They suffer from illusory superiority, which leads them to make even more thinking errors, thus creating a vicious cycle that erodes the talent pool over time. Pg217
We are drunk on our own ideas. To sober up, take a step back every now and then and examine their quality in hindsight. Which of your ideas from the past ten years were truly outstanding? Exactly. Pg223
Avoid surroundings where negative Black Swan thrive. This means: Stay out of debt, invest your savings as conservatively as possible, and get used to a modest standard of living - no matter whether your big breakthrough comes or not. Pg226
"Last chances" make us panic stricken, and the "fear of regret" can overwhelm even the most hardheaded deal makers. Pg247
Salient information has an undue influence on how we think and act. We tend to neglect hidden, slow to develop, discreet factors. Do not be blinded by irregularities. A book with an unusual, fire engine red jacket makes it on to the bestseller list. Your first instinct is to attribute the success of the book to the memorable cover. Don't. Gather enough mental energy to fight against seemingly obvious explanations. Pg250
Procrastination is idiotic because no project completes itself. So why..? Because the time lapse between sowing and reaping. To bridge it requires a high degree of mental energy....Willpower is like a battery, at least in the short term. If it is depleted, future challenges will falter. This is a fundamental insight. Self-control is not available around the clock. It needs time to refuel. The good news: To achieve this, all you need to do is refill your blood sugar and kick back and relax....Self-imposed deadlines will work only if the task is broken down step by step, with each part assigned its own due date. For this reason, nebulous New Year's resolutions are doomed to fail. Pg255
Purge yourself of the illusion of attention every now and then. Confront all possible and seemingly impossible scenarios. What unexpected events might happen? What lurks beside and behind that burning issues? What is no on addressing? Pay attention to silences as much as you respond to noises. Check the periphery, not just the center. Think the unthinkable. Something unusual can be huge; we still may not see it. Being big and distinctive is not enough to be seen. The unusual and huge thing must be expected. Pg265
If it is something to do with practiced activities, such as motor skills or questions you've answered a thousand times, it's better not to reflect to the last detail. It undermines you intuitive ability to solve problems. With complex matters, though, sober reflection is indispensable. Evolution has not equipped us for such considerations, so logic trumps intuition. Pg271
If your only tool is a hammer, all your problems will be nails. - Mark Twain pg275
The pope asked Michelangelo: "Tell me the secret of your genius. How have you created the statue of David." Michelangelo's answer: "It's simple. I removed everything that is not David." .....Thinking more clearly and acting more shrewdly means adopting Michelangelo's method: Don't focus on David. Instead, focus on everything that is not David and chisel it away. In our case: Eliminate all errors and better thinking will follow. "via negative" Pg299

I purchased this book in an airport in India. My flight was just over an hour and when I read a few chapters, I liked the short two and three page essays on various aspects of life. The book is an enjoyable read. I don't have the book with me right now, but chapters on sunk costs, averages and decision fatigue are the ones that I remember well. I will definitely read this book a second time and take pointers from it for applying in my daily life.

My (79-year old) dad also enjoyed reading this book and he would also gladly give 5-star ratings to it.

Well written list of logical fallacies transmitted in bite sized chunk of 2-4 pages each. Highly recommend before making important decisions (low risk/high impact). Plan to implement in my big projects as I know I have sucummbed to many of them before...

Who would imagine that there is such a thing as an error in thinking, let alone errors that often lead to the wrong outcome that's
not beneficial to us and those around us especially our loved ones? I didn't know that such a phenomenon exists until I came across this book titled "The Art Of Clear Thinking" by Rolf Dobelli.

An international best seller since its release in 2013, Rolf Dobelli writes simply and clearly the many errors we face and make unknowingly every day.

The book is an easy read (311 pages). Each chapter (total 99 chapters) which details the particular error , consists of not more than 2 pages, is clearly explained.

The Art Of Clear Thinking is certainly a "Must Read" if you want to change the way you think - at work, at home - every day.

Colin Choo (http://choostore.weebly.com)

The title of this book is slightly misleading as a book called "The Art of Thinking Clearly" should be much more comprehensive than this book. However, for what it does do, it does it very well. This is a collection of 99 thinking traps or biases and what you should do to avoid them. This is the largest collection of named biases I have run across in a popular book. Each chapter is short and to the point. It is well done, if somewhat misleading in the title.

Recommended.

Despite the introduction strictly advising that this isn't a how to book, and the epilogue stating how the author makes many of the thinking errors documented, this is a very interesting and insightful book

Chapter by chapter this book provides a list of thinking errors, if you have ever thought about thinking, you have likely run into one or more of them. The book does a good job documenting the errors including, in most cases, a succinct name for each thinking error, some actual research to back it up, one or more anecdotes or examples to help you solidify the error, and some tips for identifying or avoiding the error.

The book is well written, and the content very insightful. Having recently finished it, I am planning when I will re-read this so as to continuously re-learn the material.

This book - while not claiming to be original - consists of 99 common reasoning fallacies and errors. It's very easy, entertaining and interesting read; and it contains some condensed versions of the work of Nassim Taleb, Phil Rosenzweig, Dan Ariely, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. I highly recommend it!

Each of Rolf Dobelli's short chapters covers a different cognitive error, complete with an accessible and charming anecdote, the latest news from science, and a few suggestions on how to use your new awareness of this wrinkle in your thinking to protect yourself from misperceptions. I found the book intelligent and revealing. I'm also pleased that this author -- who is already very well known in Europe for both fiction and nonfiction writing -- is now being published in English. I can't decide whether this is a great book for reading straight through from cover to cover, or a great book for absorbing one or two chapters at a time. I've finished with the first alternative and plan to pursue the second immediately.

Just one word for this AWESOME. If you liked this book then i recommend you to read"making money online is real" by shawn fanning.
https://www.the store.com/dp/B073724CK2
i must say that the combination of these two books will give you a higher perception of making money

I thought The Art of Thinking Clearly was a real pleasure to read. Mr. Dobelli cited examples of everything being talked about, and each chapter was only 3 pages long, which made it excellent bedtime reading. (I believe the 'Chapters' were articles he had written at one time.) It is a book you can read over and over again, and can start in the middle, or anyplace, and it doesn't matter. I would recommend that after reading each Chapter you go to the pertinent "Notes on Sources" at the back of the book. The notes really add a lot to the subject matter, as do the additional reading suggestions should one wish to delve further into a particular subject. I highly recommend the book. It doesn't spoon feed you answers, but rather encourages you to think for yourself, by providing the grist to do so.

Though you will find many insights in this book that you probably intuitively know, Dobelli's exceptionally clear exposition helps you put them into practice.

His collection of cognitive biases, fallacies and wrong decision strategies made a large audience aware of the irrational elements of the human mind. The textbook example, of course, is economics, where nobody anticipated the 2008 crash. Dobelli comments, "Never has a group of experts failed so spectacularly."

However, it is obvious that our deficiencies in rational decision making can produce bizarre situations elsewhere, and so-called cutting edge science makes no exception. I wish The Art of Thinking Clearly were more rigorously applied to research, in particlular in the big laboratories such as CERN (see my blog for details). What comes to mind is the "sunk cost fallacy", "social proof and groupthink", "effort justification", the "feature-positive effect", "Chauffeur knowledge", the "rara sunt cara illusion", "calamity of conformity" and "why prefer a wrong map to no map at all".

But messages such as Dobelli's sink in particlularly slowly into enterprises that are too big to fail. Anyway, the book is a great read and will greatly improve your decisions.

I'm not sure why so many readers enjoyed this book. First of all, if you act how the book tells you to act, you are going to be a jerk. Second, I possess only the most basic familiarity with Bayesian statistics, economics and heuristics and I found this book to not only oversimplified but patently wrong in many places. Amazingly, this book falls victim to many (if not most) of the fallacies of which it attempts to disabuse the reader. Three examples:

1. The chapter explaining Base Rate Bias (which says we systematically fail to account for the base rate of an event's occurrence) uses the example of Mike, a fan of Mozart. Is Mike more likely to be a truck driver or an English professor? If you said "professor" you're wrong because you fell victim to the "base rate bias." Hahahaha. Isn't irrationality funny? There are 100 times more truck drivers than English professors so it's statistically more likely that Mike is a truck driver, right? WRONG. We actually don't know the answer. This example succumbs to the very bias it ostensibly reveals. Mike-is-a-truck-driver makes sense as an answer only if the incidence of Mozart-liking in English Professors is less than 100 times greater than the incidence of Mozart-liking in truck drivers. In other words, we cannot say whether Mike is more likely to be a truck driver unless we know the BASE RATE of Mozart-liking. If the incidence of Mozart-liking in English professors is 75% but only .001% in truck drivers, it's more likely that Mike is an English professor even if there are 100 times as many truck drivers as English professors. Yet, the author sticks by his "rational" conclusion that Mike is more likely to be a truck driver.

2. Dobelli stretches his "visionary" thinking to unfathomable depths of stupidity when discussing how humans (don't) understand probabilities. In an example, he claims that Water Treatment 1 is better than Water Treatment 2. Why? Because WT1 reduced the risk of death from 5% to 2%, a 3% drop. Shoddy WT2, on the other hand, only reduced the risk of death by 1%, from 1% to 0%. I'm not making this up. Dobelli claims WT1 is 3 times better than WT2! If that's the case, why aren't we all excited about hypothetical WT3 which reduces the risk from 100% to 70%?!? It's 10 times better than WT1 and 30 times better than WT2! We are not excited about WT3 because no one would choose a 70% (or even a 2%) chance of death over a 0% chance of death. (Oh wait, I shouldn't say no one because another chapter told me I'm supposed to expect improbable events - you know those events that, by definition, happen rarely.) Yet, Dobelli uses the rate of reduction as the primary measure rather than the obvious and preferable total probability of death. That's stupid and displays unclear thinking. Astonishingly, later in that same water treatment chapter, he says the only time it's worth considering small probability events is when their occurrence would be catastrophic. You mean "catastrophic" like death from drinking unsafe water?!? Apparently not.

3. The chapter on Groupthink references a study that used a methodology clearly falling under the Survivorship Bias (Chapter 1). The study looked at all the major groupthink errors, found common characteristics and assumes those common characteristics caused the failures. That is almost the exact definition given in Chapter 1 of the Survivorship Bias. I feel like I'm taking crazy pills here. I can't be the only one who sees this.

If you are serious about learning about our biases and fallacies, read Fooled by Randomness and Black Swan by Nassim Taleb, The Undercover Economist by Steven Landsburg, and blogs like Overcoming Bias and Less Wrong. Then go on iTunesU and find a basic probability and statistics course. You will be much better off than wasting your time "learning" how to spot your own irrationality from this book.

Each chapter has a nugget of goodness but it takes a little to get there. Not being a business major I am not familiar with some of the biases he discusses. As well he's not always crystal clear in his explanation. I've found it hard to get 100% absorbed in the book. I do like it and i see it playing out in my day-to-day as I become aware of the concepts but the writing is difficult for me to access. The epilogue brings the most clarity but still, there is nothing to tie the book together. He says that is his intent. The first rule of writing or speaking is to have a point. With a point that is simply to make one... its difficult to grab anything with clarity.

As mentioned in reviews before, the title is misleading. This book has some good advice to free ourselves from biases and be skeptical about the situation or information presented rather than just simple agreeing to it. But other than this, nothing extraordinary about this book that I can highlight...

The Art of Thinking Clearly by Rolf Dobelli consists of a series of some 99 short articles on incorrect thinking. Some are ones that most people are aware of, such as "social proof" (believing something because a lot of other people believe it) and "Authority Bias" (accepting or following something just because an authority said so). Others are novel and not commonly known, such as "Sunk Cost Fallacy" ( continuing to do something even when it is not worth doing anymore just because you paid for it already) and the "Incentive Super-Response Tendency (the idea that people respond to incentives by doing what is in their best interests) An example of the latter is when a reward was offered for dinosaur bones in China finders would break them into pieces to increase their reward.

This book is one that you will want to come back to from time to time to check and see how you are thinking and responding to situations in life. It is well worth keeping it handy.

An interesting collection of 1-page factual stories on all sorts of cognitive biases that we all are prone to. It's mostly based on business-related examples but can actually be well applied to day-to-day life. Did I learn a lot of interesting stuff from the book? Maybe. Did it all stick in my head and now I'm using it every day? Not really. Though I did underline a bunch of quotes and kept the book for my future reference.

This is one of those rare books that self-aware people need to understand to the fullest extent. It is a condensation of over 100 off-the-cuff cognitive defenses, combining science with anecdotes and personal insights. The result is a fast-track to avoiding mental mistakes while working, thinking, and otherwise living your life. I don't think many books have accomplished such breadth in such short form.

Excellent work, Rolf. Thank you.

A simple search for, dobelli taleb similarities, and, dobelli The Invisible Gorilla, will turned up information showing that this book has, to put it kindly, heavily borrowed without attribution.

Don't take my word for it, run those searches, determine it for yourself.

This book is frustrating. Mr. Dobelli wants us to `think clearly' and invites us to take a stroll through the cemetery of failed rock bands, authors, restaurateurs and others who tried and failed against overwhelming odds. Those who see the glass half-full are born optimists, a dirty word in this book. Any attempt at self-help or self-improvement is also doomed. Beware of dreamers and optimists Dobelli tells us, while sprinkling us with a lot of pop psychology and pop economics. Hiding under the guise of what might be called the "new realism", the author takes an illogical position of his own and hammers it throughout the book. Somehow Mr. Dobelli managed to write a big selling runaway hit but you can't. Get it? He is stubborn in his attempt to show every sort of dreamer as a fool. Another thing bothers me about this book. I don't know anything about psychology or economics, but whenever Dobelli mentions something that I do know about there is always some small mistake involved. For example, he calls the works of J. S. Bach 'concertos'. Bach did write concertos, but he also wrote cantatas, fugues, partitas, passions and more. It is a mistake to call the collection of his works `concertos'. Dobelli also beats up on religion in the most juvenile way. Through his super logical framework he doesn't understand the difference between faith and fact.

Really cool book. While I am huge fan of Thinking, Fast and Slow, this book offers an entry level and easily digestable access to key concepts of how thinking is distorted and, to some extent, what to do about it.

This book is a reminder of what you already know on common human errors that arise from heuristics and biases. If you haven't read any material on this subject, I suggest starting with the works of Daniel Kahneman & Amos Tversky. Scot Plous (The Psychology of Judgment and Decision Making) and also Nassim Taleb. These authors writings will make you think clearly.

Simple and Indispensable! Quick short read this... but lessons for a life time! Read it on a Kindle and now going to buy a physical copy for the sole reason that I need to refer it everyday to train myself to be able to spot these ubiquitious cognitive biases in my thinking.

We have evolved physically but our thinking is still stuck at our ancestral hunter-gatherer days (which was useful then!) but not now. Rolf Dobelli does an awesome job in collating these 99 thinking errors from years of psychological research and quotes from various studies. Some errors will make you smile and some will shock you. Whatever your response, you will surely benefit from this book.

Entrepreneurs profit from understanding cognitive biases in two ways: first, you'll make rational decisions; second, you'll be an effective marketer.

The Art of Thinking Clearly exposes 99 cognitive biases - simple errors all of us make in our everyday thinking - and shows us how to become rational thinkers.

Author Rolf Dobelli brings a fresh perspective because of his unique skill-set. He's a Swiss writer, novelist and entrepreneur. And he's founder of an invitation-only society of the most distinguished thinkers, scientists and artists.

Each short chapter deals with one cognitive bias, showing the thinking error in action and enlightening readers about how to think clearly.

While the book is not written for entrepreneurs, Dobelli's experience starting successful ventures makes it helpful for you.

Entrepreneurs, like anyone, are prone to making bad decisions because of their cognitive biases. This book will teach you how to discard irrationality and replace it with clear thinking.

Perhaps the biggest boon, however, is that it empowers entrepreneurs to become better marketers. If your product warrants it, you can target your marketing to make use of your customer's cognitive biases.

No matter how much you know, you're always going to be biased in your thinking. This book increases your chances of thinking clearly.

Having many short chapters, this excellent book offers a worth reading and useful pastime for the ones interested in the art of thinking clearly, as the title suggests.

Most of the thoughts presented along the book are not new to me, but the author gives straightforward and clear explanations that clarify those thoughts. Dobelli goes straight to the point without lengthy and unnecessary reasoning, his arguments being too convincing and logical. In short, Dobelli pinpoints the main biased thoughts people have and how to overcome them.

All he says is true, but do not believe any of this matters or is usefull for important decisions. These are all small and little human patterns that stand on their own, but for big stuff in life, our behavior/thinking is much more complicated. Even with a million copies sold, no rehab clinic is out of business. Meaning: people with an addiction have a hard time making the right, life saving, decissions . A (fun) psychology 101 read. It is like watching a magician: wonderful to look at, but bottomline, ... an illusion

Absolutely idiotic. Yet another "magic bullet" book on how to do something vaguely defined and poorly examined. What's wrong with this book? Distorted vision, faulty premises, poor logic, unwarranted assumptions, huge generalizations based on very limited personal experience. The content of this book is a case study in unclear thinking. But we're in the Age of the Con, so of course it has sold well.

I haven't been reading much lately but I accidentally came across this and got hooked because it's presented well in little bite sized chapters which is perfect for an attention deficient guy like me. And he makes a LOT of sense.

I also don't care much about some recent reviews that hate the book because (a) It's not original and is plagiarized and (b) He didn't attribute sources.

Doh! As if I care. I am enjoying reading it and love the pithy presentation.

This book is a collection of unattributed writings by authors such as Kathryn Schulz, Nassim Taleb, Christopher Chabris & Daniel Simons, edited together rather poorly by some hack called Rolf Dobelli resulting in a shallow whole, the very existence of which defies its purported premise.

But the word "Thinking" is upside down on the front cover so maybe I missed an intentional clever inversion.

Caution, this book should not have been titled The Art of Thinking Clearly. Instead it should have been titled: The Art of Thinking Cynically. The author's definition of thinking "clearly" seems to be rooted in a bit of arrogance. I think there are certainly other books out there which actually do teach readers how to think clearly, but this isn't one of them.

How can you learn clear thinking from a plagiarist? Christopher Chabris (The Invisible Gorilla), Kathryn Schulz (Being Wrong) and Nicholas Nassim Taleb (Fooled by Randomness and The Black Swan) have all publicly pointed out numerous passages in this book lifted verbatim without attribution from their work.

Clear thinking begins with intellectual honesty and due care and attention - it seems as if Rolf Dobelli is not capable of these basic virtues.

I purchased this book ready to read and learn. To me, it seemed like a good read at first glance. But, the author must be either very angry at society or an atheist. In one chapter he states, "Religious beliefs represent a breeding ground for confirmation bias." He describes this confirmation bias as spongy terrain where it grows wild. He says that "worshippers always find evidence for Gods existence...........and (God) only shows himself to Illiterates in the desert and in isolated mountain villages but never to the masses in New York." Ah, since God isn't on CNN or Fox News, he does not live in the form of my savior Jesus Christ! Maybe he should get his mind out of the study of human nature and make a leap of faith. Sooner or later he will realize God is there. Some of his thinking is straight forward, showing study after study of how people react. I think we all understand how we are quilted into purchasing things we don't need. How others utilize and manipulate others. That has been going on since the start of time. The secret is to simply choose what is important to you and live by that rule. If you really want to change your life, I highly recommend Doctor Richard Carlson's book, "You can be happy no matter What". Doctor Carlson is gone now, but his books are some of the best ever. Read this one, you won't regret it.

The book starts with some common sense articles and it is a good and almost interesting read (providing that you really ARE as foolish as the examples in it suggest) but at one point the author starts "explaining" things using the word probability in a way probability really doesn't work. Simply no maths at all but trying to make it sound scientific even when it is clearly wrong even to a lay person (let alone to the trained professionals). And of course, the next chapter would say "as we have shown in the previous chapter..." where nothing was actually shown just stated and clearly wrong. Try again explaining to me how it is better to remove 2 bullets from a gun with 4 bullets than 1 bullet from a gun that has 1 bullet if you are about to play Russian roulette? Why it is better to "reduce the chance of dying by 2/6 instead of 1/6" when in the second case I continue to live with 100% chance? :D :D :D
To sum up - the book might be interesting if you want to get some investment advices and you in fact ARE stupid so the common sense doesn't work for you but you need to read it in a book instead. Nothing useful here... except for mocking the author :D :D :D

At first this book looked a interesting lecture (that's why I bought it) but just after a half an hour of lecture it started to seem a waste of time which I confirmed after reading it all.

This book IS ABOUT a few stories shared by the author and IS NOT about the art of thinking clearly.

So, the title is mesleading and I'm sure it was chosen exclusevely for selling purposes.

One last note to say the author praised so much THE BLACK SWAMP by Nassim Nicholas Taleb that I lost my interest reading it.

Don't waste your money. Disturbing. His comments appear anti-God to me. I initially was attracted to this book based on his views about how the news media was so manipulative. I only found that one chapter to be totally credible. This is not a religious book but he does seem to take pot shots at God whenever he can.

An international best seller? I don't get it. Not a total loss but generally disappointing. This author knows little of J.S. Bach and his "concertos", uses many examples that are pure assumption and not logically demonstrable, has flagrant biases against religious or optimistic thinking....that's enough. I guess I need to write my own book.

A derivative text and poorly done at that. Almost all taken from Daniel Kahneman's THINKING, FAST and SLOW (the remainder from Taleb). He credits both authors, but didn't fully understand them as he passes on their examples with errors. If you're interested in the field, Nobelist Kahneman has the seminal volume. If you do read Dobelli's book, be careful, it has mistakes both obvious and subtle.

When plagurism is required to sell a book, you have to question the character of the Author and thus the contents of any work. Mr. Dobelli has clearly plagurised the work of Nassim Nicholas Taleb and may I add a *so called* friend of the gentleman. I would reccommend anybody not to purchase this book out of the principle of theft and that is something a society does not wish to have in it. My recommendation is to purchase Anti-fragility, The Black Swan and fooled by randomness.You will gain far more and master the art of seeing clearly, not the art of conducting theft. In light of one of Mr. Dobelli aprohisms, i propose this "The theft from a friend, is a debt on the soul" Shame on you Rolf. If you think I'm being harsh look at the evidence yourself... to all lovers of books, vote with your feet...[...]

Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder

The author isn't an expert in social sciences nor does he claim to be one nor do his essays reflect a sophisticated intellectual person. He talks about things which most people already know, but the worst thing is his bigoted insinuations about people who believe in God calling them a bunch of illitrates living in the dersert (referring to Arabs), or people who live in mountains (referring to everyone else).

As I read I wondered how so many people could be finding this book useful. I'm not an intellectual (ok, I do have a PhD, but no stunning intellect) yet I found the book 'fluffy' and full of waffle. I wanted powerful and clever writing that would make me think 'wow' 'amazing': something insightful and sharp. Clear thinking even. I like books that make me think and this one was not for me. I bought the book two days ago, read half the book and took it back to the bookshop today for a full refund. I cannot waste my money. But then I wondered if perhaps it is me who is stupid and that everyone else knows something that I don't (does that sound familiar?). So I thought I would visit the store and read the one star reviews. I think it might be ok for reading on the toilet or waiting for a plane but for the one or two marginally interesting chapters it is expensive. The short (usually 2 or so pages) chapters seem aimed at people with short attention spans - modern man perhaps? It does not, in my experience, read like a script that has been thoroughly researched and which could be backed up with evidence. I have not checked each 'fact' up myself so I cannot be sure, but my hunch is that the writer likes the sound of his own voice. Still, writing a best seller is no mean feat so I congratulate the author. I wish I could write so well (for the masses). The author is an alumni of St Gallen, which is, as I understand, where Switzerland's elite go. Is he making the best of his talents? Perhaps like many of us, he has a family to feed.

I thought the book sounded interesting so I got on the store to "look inside", and found a mistake on line 1 of the introduction! He used the word partake instead of participate. A small thing perhaps, but that's just on the first line. Do I want to read more?

As others have mentioned, this book consists of plagiarised content from several sources such as Nassim Taleb (Black Swan) and Christopher Chabris (Invisible Gorilla).

Not impressed, applying for a refund. Would recommmend other purchasers do the same.