The Next Book

The next book on the list of education books is Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes by Maria Konnikova.  I have to admit, I was never the greatest fan of Sherlock Holmes, but his observational skill was unparalleled.  He was also a literary legend based off the thought processes of real people, so that helps in that we’re not dealing completely with fictional characters.

In comparison to the Mega Memory, this book focuses less on action steps and more on the psychology of how we think (so far).  The book provides a good logical basis on why we think the way we think (in a general sense).  Most of our thinking isn’t really thinking.  It’s an autopilot response based off a person making snap (and very biased) judgements.  The goal of this book seems to be to make the reader aware of such bias.  There may be more to it than that, but that’s where we’ll start.

In some sense, the idea does appeal to me and the logical reasoning behind why we don’t notice much of our surroundings is interesting.  Going back, it’s because we spend most of our time in fight or flight mode, and that mode does things automatically without thinking.  Much of our day is spent in mindless action on complete autopilot, without a second thought as to why we are doing what we are doing.  The book then posits that the difference between the average person and Sherlock Holmes is that Holmes has swapped the default state to a state of disbelief and questioning.

Holmes’ entire idea is that everything presented is not plausible, and therefore needs to be explained before he even begins to think about the problem.  The average persons’ response is to go on autopilot and accept what was presented as fact and move on to higher thought, or to simply autopilot on.  If a person can train themselves to get out of autopilot, then the person can begin having mental breakthroughs because the underlying facts don’t necessarily match what happens to be true.  Bias is one good way to describe what we consider those underlying facts. 

Anyways, it’s a good contrast to Mega Memory and provides a much more in depth look at memory and thinking that has a much more scientific background.  Very interesting, to say the least.