Loserthink: How Untrained Brains Are Ruining America by Scott Adams

Key Takeaways

Thinking like a psychologist

1. The mind reading delusion – people are dreadful at reading other people and knowing what they’re thinking

2. Occam’a Razor – In science the simplest exclamation that fixed it fits the fact it’s quite easy to arrive at however nearly every other round this is in a good jurisdiction because everyone has a different opinion on what is a simple fact

3. Projection – people accuse others of having faults flaws or biases that they themselves have

4. Ego is a tool that you should be able to dial up and down if you want to accomplish something ambitious turn off your ego and if you’re dealing with loved ones turn it down. Don’t choose ego over effectiveness. Put yourself in potentially embarrassing situations as a sort of practice and learn to ignore or at least minimize your embarrassment

Thinking like an artist

1. Failure of imagination – The best explanation to most things in life is something that has never occurred to you. Most people fail because of a failure of imagination

Thinking like a historian

1. History is extremely filtered and biased based on who wrote it. Every government writes its own version of history to brainwash its citizens no one history is objective everyone is slanted

2. Don’t forget about the past but it is more productive to look forward to understanding what the paths to success are rather than what has happened

3. Slippery slope – things will continue on their path until they go too far. Almost everything can be considered a slippery slope so it’s more productive to look at forces and systems

4. Privacy is overrated. Sometimes it helps but context is important. When gay men started coming out, their lack of privacy helped their cause

Thinking like an engineer

1. A new expert will always call the work of the previous expert a joke

2. The one variable illusion – people look for a silver bullet when in reality almost always multiple variables matter

Thinking like a leader

1. Directional truth filter – truth has two important aspects: accuracy and direction. If you don’t know which one is more important, you might be falling to loserthink. Getting the direction right is almost always important but being 100% precise is only sometimes so

2. Confusing hyperbole with legitimate opinion – make sure you know which you are dealing with

3. Systems vs goals – a good system is doing something on a regular basis to increase your odds of doing something productive even if you don’t exactly know the final outcome