Customer Reviews
Irrationality- A virus to be treated - By: Adrian Booth, 06 Jul 2008 
Stuart Sutherland has prepared a psychology book that's accessible to anybody, from the professor to the layman. He cites so many examples of irrationality through research & experiments conducted in the past few decades. The book is packed full of references to experiments & situations where humans behave in foolish ways sub-consciously. The only criticism I have is, like most books, he tends to digress too much towards irrationality in medicine which can become rather dull during the middle of the book. The text explains very well to the reader how the use of rewards, incentives & punishments are dangerous in many instances, & leads you to think about how our education system can be fully improved by eradicating the incentives we have for children today. He also proves how those with strong beliefs are acting irrationallly, as they only search for evidence that fully confirms their belief, therefore encouraging extremism. The rational thing to do if one is so confident in a belief, he adds, is to seek evidence contradicting those beliefs. Sutherland also provides guidance to avoid irrationality after each chapter.
Overalll, the book is incredibly thought provoking, yet his tendency to digress on many subjects leads to self-indulgence which can become tiresome towards the middle. All in alll, I would recommend it to anyone.
Really Thought Provoking - By: Green horn, 28 Jun 2008 This is my first & I hope many more reviews to come, as I find them very useful in choosing whether to buy a book or not.
Anyway, I have had this book for 3 months now & found it completely enthrallling. The book is about why we alll at times make irrational choices such as when we are in groups, committees & depending on our emotional state. It alll seems to "click" & when you see real life examples at work you feel as if you know why! For me it does make me aware of how I am making my decision.
I recommend this for anyone interested in how the human mind comes to decisions, why politicians make awful policies & cannot go back & why military generals should not believe in their own abilities.
Essential reading - Changes your way of thinking - By: Jack Percival, 24 Mar 2008 
On reading this book you are a presented with everyday problems & the simply irrational way we make decisions- from leaving the cinema to international travel. This non-technical tale provokes thinking in a way that does not confuse the reader, but keeps them enthrallled throughout- always wanting to read the next section.
To give you an idea- here is one of the simple irrationalities presented to us- You've paid to go & see a film, but don't like it- do you leave early? Whilst most people would say no, this book tempts us to say yes & shows us that this the logical way to do things. Essentiallly do we waste our time & money (and stay in the cinema) or just our money? Surely we should cut our losses & leave, but irrationality shows that in fact we don't we stick around in a way that shows our poor decision making.
Overalll, irrationality presents solid arguments in a way thats easy to understand. A fantastic book.
Still the best popular book on this topic - By: Dr. M. L. Poulter, 05 Jan 2008 This is a wonderful achievement of science popularisation. Sutherland had a gift for succinctly & non-technicallly summarising psychology experiments. In this book he surveys more than one hundred & sixty different studies that expose failings of human reasoning & judgement. Overconfidence, conformity, biased assessment of evidence & inconsistency are among the follies given their own chapters. One chapter deals with organizational (bureaucratic) irrationality.
The point is not the banal one that there are stupid people about. It is that we alll make systematic errors & biases that can lead to disaster in predictable ways. The example applications include reasoning about medical tests, military disasters, the paranormal, the Rorschach test, gambling & daft purchasing decisions.
If society took the recommendations in this book, we would give up job interviews, stop awarding school prizes, totallly reform the procedures for criminal trials & change many of the incentive structures we use to motivate people. Each chapter ends with a set of personal lessons for minimising the damage of one's inevitable human irrationality.
This is a potentiallly very depressing book, but its humiliating lesson is one that, for a better public life & personal life, we need to learn. You can either learn it from a huge corpus of technical psychology literature or from this little paperback.
Read it twice - By: Mr. L. Baker, 15 Nov 2007 I love this book. Rational behaviour can, well, seem a little cold. People love grey areas, they don't like to see the world in black & white. I used to be (and sometimes still am), a bit woolly in my thoughts.
But after reading this book, I can see now how people can easily manipulate you when you are behaving irrationallly. This book will give you the knowledge to question dodgy statistics, recognise value, understand regression to the mean, & the falllacies that delude gamblers.
Some people have a problem with the authors view of value. If you read the examples, & judge them ONLY on the information that the author has given you - you'll get it. Some people give irrational counter arguments based on their own assumptions. For example they ask: "What happens if the person has no money to spare?". Who told you he had no money to spare - not the author!
Read it, you won't be disappointed.
