Book Reading #49: Why We Make Mistakes

Why We Make Mistakes

Joseph T. Hallinan

Summary: 

Chapter 10: We All Think We Are Above Average. Hallinan describes overconfidence to be one of the main reasons why people believe they are better at something than they really are. He claims overconfidence is observed in almost everyone, except those who are depressed. He mentions various examples of how businesses have learned how to take advantages of this overconfidence, and individuals end up loosing money thinking they will do better than others, for example going more often to the gym, paying off credit cards before interest rates get higher, and thinking we can diet better than the average person. The term for this concept is calibration, we are poorly calibrated thinking we are better than we in fact are. He also discusses the fact that we think the more information we obtain the better equipped we will be, which actually leads to information overflow.

Chapter 11: We'd Rather Wing It. Practice is what makes experts. Hallinan states that almost 10 years of serious practice are required for someone to become an expert at something. This fact is attributed to experts practicing creating a library in their minds, where they use patter recognition to allow them to anticipate evens and learn how to respond quickly. He then discussed cognitive maps, and how non experts rather try doing things themselves without reading manual, just guided by how they think work, but unfortunately this leads them to make many errors. He also discussed how people become accustomed to a way of doing things, that they ignore new and simpler ways to getting things done.

Discussion: In chapter ten, Hallinan discusses how we think we are better than average, and how we can do better than that, however, I think majority of us are actually in than average standing. I think this belief comes from the idea of being always positive, but what if we were not always positive, what if we were always thinking negatively? If we were, then we would never strive to be better, to become better individuals than we currently are. 

In chapter eleven, one of the ideas that called my attention the most was towards the end of the chapter, and it was about becoming used to do things one way, that we become blinded to see what other new ways there are to do things better. Reading about this reminded me of the discussion we had in class regarding teaching individuals to use shortcuts in a computer. I think this is some how contradictory with the discussion in chapter ten, and the idea of staying positive and trying to do better.