Most of us pass through the bowels of our education systems without a single course on critical thinking.  This is pretty dire, considering how fundamental decision making is to every aspect of our lives, both personal and professional.  It wouldn't be so bad if our brains were naturally deterministic, objective and reliable when forming beliefs, but they're not.  As Kida shows all too clearly, we have faulty thinking.  Our thinking naturally operates heuristically, which generally serves us extremely well.  Every now and then however, things don't go so well, and these heuristics can lead us to make incredibly bad decisions and form totally unsubstantiated beliefs.  This doesn't just apply to the usual suspects like ghosts, alien abductions or fortune telling.  Consider how much credence is currently given to intelligent design or homeopathy.  All of these subjects have a very large and devoted group of believers, including extremely well educated, intelligent people.  Kida details the six basic mistakes we make when thinking, that allow us to believe in these things.

In great detail and an easy to digest style, Kida fleshes out this Six Pack of mistakes vividly and entertainingly with plenty of meat and examples.  It's pretty compelling reading.  Eventually however, you can't help but be shocked at how seriously damaging these mistakes can be.  All the more reason to become familiar with them.

Aside from the not so threatening artifacts of the six pack above, Kida also describes cases of obscene exploitation, gross miscarriages of justice, blatant incompetence of governments, and many other horror stories, all of which are allowed to occur in our societies today because of the window afforded them by the six pack.

One of the strongest impressions I was left with was how powerful simple statistics can be in helping to make a decision, and how most of us completely fail to exploit that fact. Even when we try, we still tend to get it wrong because we don't have a good enough understanding of basic probability.  Another is our unwarranted use of anecdotal evidence in making decisions.  Again, we prefer to hear a story about something than rely on cold, hard, and ultimately more reliable statistics.  Then there's false memories, framing, and the weight given to eye witness testimony in our courts.  These are just the tip of the iceberg!

This is one of the most important books I've read recently.  It all sounds pretty obvious once you've had time to digest it, but it is unquestionably valuable.  Understanding this material points you directly towards more objective thought, and will make you think twice when evaluating information on which to make a decision or form a belief, particularly if it's serious.  It applies to everyone, we all make these mistakes - it doesn't matter what you do, or how intelligent or educated you are. 

But don't just believe me...