Michael Kaplan & Ellen Kaplan's "Bozo Sapeins"

The Kaplans have put together an entertaining romp through human decision-making and the limits of humans. They bring up all the classic examples of illusions and misperception, they review classic examples of human errors in complex systems, and they romp through human history looking at examples of our failings. It is all good fun. I did learn a few things from the book, but I find the style emphasized more flash-and-dash rather than a careful examination of the limitations and the building of a meaningful understanding. But this is excusable. These two writers are not experts in the field and they are not writing a textbook. This is meant for the general reader, so it is a bit frothy and breathless in its race to uncover more and better examples of our limitations.

Here's their own summary of the content of their book:

Is it instinctive for people -- our doltish enemies, our spontaneous selves -- to get things wrong?

This one question spawns many more: why is it, now that we have taken over the world, that we are apparently unable to stop ourselves from wrecking it? Why do we let belief blind us to evidence? Why do we abuse -- and kill -- each other in the name of unprovable abstractions? Why, despite having information that a Rothschild would envy, are our economic decisions so impulsive and haphazard? Why do we let celebrities tell us what to do? Why do we find mysteries compelling, and their solutions disappointing? And what has all this to do with the fact that all people speak the same way to babies and all cultures imagine heaven as flowery fields, laced with streams and studded with wide-space trees? These are some of the problems we will be taking up in the next six chapters.

They do discuss these topics. They cite interesting relevant reseach. They provide entertaining anecdotes. But in the end, the book isn't fully satisfying. I don't mind recommending it as a 'good read', but it isn't going to make you an expert in the field.

What puzzles me is why the experts can't write the books that this books reveals a market for: explanations of our limitations in decision-making. Of course we are endlessly fascinated in ourselves. Rather than read a he-said, she-said thriller about relationships, this kind of book usefully gets us to think about ourselves and our limits.