I bought this book just because I saw Taleb eulogizing the book right on the book cover and so I fell for it. If you have read The Black Swan, The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb then I would strongly re-commend do NOT go for the book but if you haven’t dipped into the ocean of Taleb’s thoughts then this book is for you. More or less, The Art of Thinking Clearly harps on the same line of thoughts, as is the case with Black Swan. Each chapter in the former case is like bullet points of latter’s approach. Both talks about reverse engineering of thought process, counter-intuitiveness and randomness.
The book is a database of brief explanations of occurrences. It is quite a light read but I personally don’t think it can help anybody with decision making. The book surfaces things that are already present in everybody’s mind and some of them even have recognized them without reading the book even but had it actually helped anyone in decision-making, I am still doubtful.
In one of his chapters, he talks about the inability of humans to comprehend probabilities well, I completely differ with this opinion of his. People do take probabilities into consideration, I mean, there are major chunk of individuals who see life as grey and not only black or only white. For these many people, there is always a space called the benefit of doubt and they leave it open while dealing with people around them whether in office or in life as a whole.
I am a person with an average intelligence yet I feel this book is far from satiating my intellectual appetite. I love books that make me think even when am not reading but this international best seller is not for me.
