TwitBookClub discussion

Discussion thread for David McRaney's "You Are Not So Smart: Why You Have Too Many Friends on Facebook, Why Your Memory Is Mostly Fiction, and 46 Other Ways You're Deluding Yourself". Share your thoughts on the book here.

I thought this would be an interesting read, and it started out alright, then it went downhill from there in about 45 different ways. McRaney quickly turns into an author who talks down to the reader, "you are not so smart" is a commonly repeated line in the book, and quickly becomes a cliche; clearly the author is smarter than I am since he wrote a couple of books with similar titles that went on to sell, so who am I to argue that particular point. However, he fails to bring up much factual content to back up his claims beyond a few lose studies brought up here and there. There's a lot of jumping to conclusions as well, however there's some food for thought in this one (it would've been a much shorter book had all the leaps to conclusion by the author been tossed out in editing). Readers will be advised to look for other sources should any of the ways we're deluding ourselves sound familiar or interesting enough to warrant further research. It's not a bad book as a form of a brief overview, but doesn't go much further than that, not very memorable either, come to thing of it. (Not unlike the book, this review is equally brief and more of an overview because I can't really be bothered to look up particular examples and page numbers to prove my points.)