Blunder
Why Smart People Make Bad Decisions
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Narrated by:
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Zachary Shore
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Kevin Pariseau
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By:
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Zachary Shore
About this listen
From colonialism to globalization, from gender wars to civil wars, or any circumstance for which our best solutions backfire, Shore demonstrates how rigid thinking can subtly lead us to undermine ourselves. In the process, he identifies seven "cognition traps" to avoid. These insidious yet unavoidable mind-sets include:
Drawing on examples from history, politics, business and economics, health care, even folk tales and popular culture, Shore illustrates the profound impact blunders can have. But he also emphasizes how understanding these seven simple cognition traps can help us all make wiser judgments in our daily lives.
For anyone whose best-laid plans have been foiled by faulty thinking, Blunder shines the penetrating spotlight of history on decision making and the patterns of thought that can lead us all astray.
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Human beings have been battling one another since time immemorial. But why war and terrorism? Why are men almost always the killers, and why are war and sex so inextricably linked? Why do we kill members of our own species intentionally, when few other animals do so?
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This is the Berkley view point on terriorism
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Why?
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Despite the outpouring of books, movies, museums, memorials, and courses devoted to the Holocaust, a coherent explanation of why such ghastly carnage erupted from the heart of civilized Europe in the 20th century still seems elusive even 70 years later. Numerous theories have sprouted in an attempt to console ourselves and to point the blame in emotionally satisfying directions - yet none of them are fully convincing.
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Outstanding book! A must read
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This essential biography, by the author most deeply familiar with the vast archives of the Soviet era, offers an unprecedented, fine-grained portrait of Stalin, the man and dictator. Without mythologizing Stalin as either benevolent or an evil genius, Khlevniuk resolves numerous controversies about specific events in the dictator's life while assembling many hundreds of previously unknown letters, memos, reports, and diaries into a comprehensive, compelling narrative of a life that altered the course of world history.
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Loved it, but wouldn't want to live it
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Andrei Lankov has gone where few outsiders have ever been. A native of the former Soviet Union, he lived as an exchange student in North Korea in the 1980s. He has studied it for his entire career, using his fluency in Korean and personal contacts to build a rich, nuanced understanding. In The Real North Korea, Lankov substitutes cold, clear analysis for the overheated rhetoric surrounding this opaque police state.
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Broad and nuanced account of North Korea
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The ascension of Vladimir Putin - a former lieutenant colonel of the KGB - to the presidency of Russia in 1999 should have been a signal that the country was headed away from democracy. Yet in the intervening years - as America and the world's other leading powers have continued to appease him - Putin has grown into not only a dictator but a global threat. With his vast resources and nuclear weapons, Putin is at the center of a worldwide assault on political liberty.
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A polemic against Putin
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Potsdam
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After Germany's defeat in World War II, Europe lay in tatters. Millions of refugees were dispersed across the continent. Food and fuel were scarce. Britain was bankrupt while Germany had been reduced to rubble. In July 1945, Harry Truman, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin gathered in a quiet suburb of Berlin to negotiate a lasting peace - a peace that would finally put an end to the conflagration that had started in 1914, a peace under which Europe could be rebuilt.
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Richly told and entertaining.
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Master historian Barbara W. Tuchman looks at history in a unique way and draws lessons from what she sees. This accessible introduction to the subject of history offers striking insights into America's past and present, trenchant observations on the international scene, and thoughtful pieces on the historian's role. Here is a splendid body of work, the story of a lifetime spent "practicing history".
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Barbara Tuchman fan faced with reality
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Faced with the ceaseless stream of news about war, crime, and terrorism, one could easily think we live in the most violent age ever seen. Yet as New York Times bestselling author Steven Pinker shows in this startling and engaging new work, just the opposite is true: violence has been diminishing for millennia and we may be living in the most peaceful time in our species's existence.
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George Friedman has forecasted the coming trends (politics, technology, population, and culture) of the next century in The Next 100 Years, and focused his predictions on the coming ten years in The Next Decade. Now, in Flashpoints, Friedman zooms in on the region that has, for 500 years, been the cultural hotbed of the world - Europe - and examines the most basic and fascinating building block of the region: culture.
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Forgotten Ally
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For decades, a major piece of World War II history has gone virtually unwritten. The war began in China two full years before Hitler invaded Poland, and China eventually became the fourth great ally, partner to the United States, the Soviet Union, and Great Britain. Yet its drama of invasion, resistance, slaughter, and political intrigue remains little known in the West.
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Bland
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The Return of Marco Polo's World
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Drawing on decades of firsthand experience as a foreign correspondent and military embed for The Atlantic, as well as encounters with preeminent realist thinkers, Kaplan outlines the timeless principles that should shape America's role in a turbulent world: a respect for the limits of Western-style democracy; a delineation between American interests and American values; an awareness of the psychological toll of warfare; a projection of power via a strong navy; and more.
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Essays on the Region of the Silk Road
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What listeners say about Blunder
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
- Gaye Dennison
- 02-27-11
Only Human
Found this very interesting, smart people can make mistakes, but a wise person would learn from theirs.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Claire
- 11-15-19
Some interesting points but repetitive
There are some good points in this book - however they are emphasized so emphatically that they get repetitive and a bit annoying. Additionally the order of the book left me a bit confused/felt a bit disjointed. However, the narration was quite good and the author has clearly done his research. I really enjoyed the stories from history and the focus on the concept of "if we don't learn about the past we are doomed to repeat it". Understanding human error is definitely a worthy endeavour and this audiobook is a good introduction to the field for a non-expert.
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Overall
- Andy
- 07-11-09
helpful extension of the genre
Blunder is a net add to the whole "wisdom of crowds" discussion. What I liked most about this book was how Shore provided a handful of obscure but interesting examples of how decision makers'charateristics impacted their decisions. Intro by the author is solid. Narration is also solid.
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12 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Andrew Raymond
- 06-17-11
Pulls No Punches
A splendid introduction to the concept of cognition traps, into which we all inevitably fall, and which we all need to learn to avoid and recover from. Well read by the author, who clearly has the a passion for the subject.
Once caveat for the listener -- if you have any problem hearing candid analysis of what went/is going wrong in Vietnam, Iraq, or Afganistan, then this may potentially offend you. However, be advised that the author DOES teach to various staff of DoD and the US armed forces, so he does, in my opinion, present these without and deliberate biases.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Joshua Kim
- 06-10-12
Critiquing "Blunder"
There is a section of my (virtual) bookshelf (stored on the Audible/Amazon cloud) that could be titled: "Why You Are an Idiot". When my spouse, kids, boss (or you) asks me how I can be so dumb so often, I can just point to these books.
My most recent addition is, Blunder: Why Smart People Make Bad Decisions by Zachary Shore.
Blunder has its limitations (see below), but is a great addition to the oeuvre books on human failure. My favorite example of this genre is,Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error by Kathryn Schulz
Other books of this type that I've read in the past couple of years include:
The Invisible Gorilla: And Other Ways Our Intuitions Deceive Us by Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons
Why We Make Mistakes: How We Look Without Seeing, Forget Things in Seconds, and
Are All Pretty Sure We Are Way Above Average by Joseph T. Hallinan
My next book is,On Second Thought: Outsmarting Your Mind's Hard-Wired Habits by Wray Herbert
Any other "dumb us" books that you can recommend?
In Blunder, Zachary Shore (who has the cool sounding job of professor of national security affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School), sets out 7 big reasons why we get things wrong.
The theme that runs through Blunder is that expertise and knowledge are necessary, but not sufficient, conditions for making good decisions.
The 7 cognitive mistakes include:
Exposure Anxiety: Our predilection to project overconfidence as a response to fear or uncertainty, based mostly on our desire not to appear weak.
Infomania: Our tendency to hoard information for ourselves, or ignore information that we don't want to hear.
Static Cling: Our desire for constancy and stability in a changing world, which leaves us unable to grasp when things have changed.
Causefusion: Our propensity to confuse correlation with causation, and to inappropriately assign a narrative to explain unrelated events.
Flatview: Our inclination to see the world in black and white terms, rather than recognizing shades of gray.
Cure-allism: Our proclivity to try and solve diverse problems with a single solution.
Mirror Imaging: Our penchant to transfer out reactions and beliefs on others, thinking that everyone will react to events the way we would.
Shore is not interested in explaining the psychological, biological, or sociological roots of our blunders,. Rather, he gives examples of when people (in government or business) screw up, then tries to understand these errors through the framework of his 7 cognitive mistakes.
Perhaps we should run through the list of 7 each time we make a big decision, but I'm afraid we might end up not making any decisions or taking any actions at all.
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8 people found this helpful
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Overall
- SAMA
- 12-18-09
Finally, A Book Everyone Must Have
You have what it takes to shine, but sometimes find yourself falling flat? I thought I had to work extra hard and go through struggles to achieve my goals, until I got this book. I realized that altering my approaches just a little, with the concepts mentioned in this book in mind, helped me get ahead more.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Eric
- 02-07-11
Worth the listen, enlightening
Good book overall, a worthwhile look at the mental stumbling blocks that cause people to commit to counter-productive courses of action. I found the case he makes for each of his points interesting, and I was able to look at my own decision making in light of each of his points. I did find some of his made up words a little annoying, insisting on using "Cause-fusion" to refer to the confusion of causal relationships irritating, especially when it conjugated into other verb forms, "He was cause-fused..." I also found his example for the final chapter to be too mired in his own interests - as a blind person, he was clearly interested in the example of another blind person recovering part of his site, but the example ended up feeling somewhat contrived, and went on too long.
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2 people found this helpful
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Overall
- George Lober
- 09-04-09
A Gem for Critical Thinkers
For anyone interested in Critical Thinking and the traps faulty thinking can lead us into, this book is a must! Shore offers one of those rare gems of intellectual thought: a thoroughly accessible, clear, engagingly written work, supported with one compelling and illustrative anecdote or example after another from a variety of fields, including history, biology, psychology, economics, and literature. The result is a book that is not just enlightening in its analysis, but absolutely enjoyable to read.
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5 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Delano
- 02-02-10
Don't waste your time
I was expecting a book based on solid psychology research. Instead, it's a "historian" making obvious points, yet basing them on very little evidence. To make each point he goes on for about 20 minutes longer than necessary - it sounds like this book received no editing at all. And his use of historical examples is very simplistic to the point of being amateurish. Apparently he's really a professor, but I shudder to think that this is how students are being taught history. Please, choose any other book in this category instead.
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9 people found this helpful
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- Anonymous User
- 04-06-12
Good points but stories are boring
What could have made this a 4 or 5-star listening experience for you?
More interesting events
What didn’t you like about Zachary Shore and Kevin Pariseau ’s performance?
Performance was Okay.
What reaction did this book spark in you? Anger, sadness, disappointment?
Truths
Any additional comments?
More modernized events to bring point home to the listner.
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1 person found this helpful