The Art Of Thinking Clearly

In the Introduction, Dobelli recounts how a chance meeting with Nassim Nicholas Taleb awakened his fascination with “cognitive errors,” the systematic ways human judgment strays from logic. He writes, “The failure to think clearly, or what experts call a ‘cognitive error,’ is a systematic deviation from logic—from optimal, rational, reasonable thought and behavior” (7). This definition reframes irrationality not as a flaw but as a predictable feature of the human mind—an approach Dobelli maintains throughout the book. Positioning himself as a translator of behavioral science rather than a researcher, he compiles these recurring thought traps so that readers can spot and mitigate them—not erase them entirely.

The first 10 essays map how perception, emotion, and social influence quietly distort reasoning. “Why You Should Visit Cemeteries: Survivorship Bias” (the error of focusing on visible successes while ignoring the far more numerous failures that never make it into the data set) reveals how achievement comes to appear far more attainable than it is. “Does Harvard Make You Smarter?: Swimmer’s Body Illusion” cautions against mistaking selection effects for outcomes. Elite swimmers aren’t fit because they train; they train because they’re fit. “Why You See Shapes in the Clouds: Clustering Illusion” exposes the tendency to see patterns in random data, which fuels everything from stock-market myths to supernatural pattern-spotting.