"If knowledge is power, then what we don't know is wisdom."
----Adam Grant
Every once in awhile I take the time to share a book I'm reading or have read. Non-fiction is my genre of choice, so this book fits the bill, especially in light of what we've been experiencing of late.
Intelligence is usually seen as the ability to think and learn, but in a rapidly changing world, there's another set of cognitive skills that might matter more: the ability to rethink and unlearn. In our daily lives, too many of us favor the comfort of conviction over the discomfort of doubt. We listen to opinions that make us feel good, instead of ideas that make us think hard. We see disagreement as a threat to our egos, rather than an opportunity to learn. We surround ourselves with people who agree with our conclusions, when we should be gravitating toward those who challenge our thought process. The result is that our beliefs get brittle long before our bones. We think too much like preachers defending our sacred beliefs, prosecutors, proving the other side wrong, and politicians campaigning for approval--and too little like scientists searching for truth. Intelligence is no cure, and it can even be a curse: being good at thinking can make us worse at rethinking. The brighter we are, the blinder to our own limitations we can become.
A guiding principle of this book is to argue like you're right but listen like your wrong.
We don't have to believe everything we think or internalize everything we feel.
This book is an invitation to let go of views that are no longer serving us well and prize mental flexibility, humility, and curiosity over foolish consistency.
The author describes part of the problem as 'cognitive laziness.' Some psychologists point out that we're mental misers: we often prefer the ease of hanging on to old views over the difficulty of grappling with new ones. Yet there are also deeper forces behind our resistance to rethinking. Questioning ourselves makes the world more unpredictable. It requires us to admit that the facts may have changed, that what was once right may now be wrong. Reconsidering something we believe deeply can threaten our identities, making it feel as if we're losing a part of ourselves.
