Most people have an extremely poor sense of how the world works. Global average was 2/13 questions correct, highly educated groups did not perform better than the general public, it can’t be due to education then. The world view nowadays is outdated and dramatized. This book overrides our natural instinct for drama (just like we must override the craving for sugar and fat) and gives us thinking tools to more correctly assess the world situation.
Interesting thoughts (Instinct):
The Gab Instinct
The biggest misconception is “The world is divided in two”, we have an instinct of binary thinking which is enhanced by the media. 85% of the world is already in the “developed country” section in the eyes of 1965.
The Negativity Instinct
“Things are getting worse” - We have a tendency to see the bad things more than the good.
It’s Bad but also Better - Keep both thoughts in your head simultaneously .
Good news is not news - Expect bad news, ask yourself if it was an equally large positive improvement would it be reported?
Gradual improvement is not news - We tend to notice the dips which hide the gradual improvement.
Rosy pasts - People glorify their early experiences but are rarely accurate, due to their brains filtering the bad.
The Fear Instinct
We do not have the brains to consume all information out there, so we filter it by the most dramatic, and if not careful we become to think theunusual is usual.
The most frightful things are almost never the most likely
Make fewest decisions when afraid
The Size Instinct
The pin-code of the world population is 1114 , by 2100 it will be 1145. Pin-code is an easy way to know the distribution of the world's population.
The Blame Instinct
The instinct to find a single simple cause as to why something bad has happened. We tend to look for bad people who confirm our existing beliefs. We cannot demonize journalists, they too have a distorted view as us, and we should not expect the media to give an accurate description of reality. We rarely look in the mirror. Only in a few countries with the most destructive leaders has progress been halted, we must then ask how important they really are. When we identify the bad guy, we stop thinking.
The Urgency Instinct
Avoid making decisions in fear, it halts our ability to think analytically as the urge to take quick action overwhelms us. Relax, it’s almost never as urgent as we think. We need the urgency instinct in making quick decisions, but using it for a general understanding of the world and long term decisions distorts reality.
NOW OR NEVER creates apathy, avoid it, take steps instead of big jumps, there is time.
This is an instinct that activates all the others as we start feeling fear.
Nebudu lhát, číst tuhle knížku v angličtině když jsem jí zprvu nechápala ani v češtině byl oříšek. Ráda (i když bych asi neměla) si do knížek píšu a když ji zrovna čtu v aj tak i překládám. Bohužel knížku nevlastním tak jsem si veškeré poznámky zapsala do Notionu, který jsem momentálně začala používat na zápisky z knih. Je to opravdu super nástroj pro zapisování myšlenek, jejich hodnocení a reflektování. Kniha mě donutila se trošku víc zamyslet nad světem i když mi některé myšlenky připadala logicky primitivní, něco na tom bude. Přikládám obrázek, který hezky shrnuje myšlenky z knihy a taky jsem díky němu to co mi kniha měla předat pochopila o něco více.
