I'm not so smart. Neither are you. And I'm not saying we're cripplingly ignorant but we're pretty damn deluded. The thing is, we have to be. If we weren't working with these delusions we'd never get out of bed. And if we did somehow manage to get out of bed, we'd probably be eaten by a velociraptor.

McRaney's book is a blog-style digest of all the heuristics, biases, and psychological coping mechanisms that allow us to survive. Starting with the idea of Priming (heh-- get it! McRaney's sense of humor is great), and working through such civilization builders as Confirmation Bias, Hindsight Bias, Bystander and Dunning-Kruger Effects, all the way through to Subjective Validation and Groupthink, McRaney reports on the psychological studies that have been done to reveal how we constantly fundamentally misconceive ourselves and the world around us. We're dumb. But we have to be. So if we're slightly more aware of just how blinkered we are, that's a step in the right direction.

A great book of pop science that I really enjoyed. I hope you will, too.

Note: Five stars for the book. Four stars for the narration. The actor narrating the book often clearly misread the spirit of the text.