You are Not So Smart- book and podcast notes

You Are Not So Smart Podcast














Some of the key, relevent concepts from the text:
Groupthink-129
Quaker Oats, the first branding experiment
Coke Vs Pepsi Taste Test 88-89
Words and false memories 176 177
Social Norms 186


For instance, look at this sequence of letters and then recite them out loud without looking:  RKFBIIRSCBSUSSR.   Unless you have caught on, this is a really difficult task.   Now chunk those letters into managable portions like this: RK  FBI  IRS  CBS  USSR.   Look away now and try to recite them.   It should be much easier now.   You just took fifteen bits of information and reduced them to five.   -7

Be careful.  People like to be told what they already know.  Remember that.  They get uncomfortable when you tell them new things.   New things. . . well, new things aren't what they expect.  They like to know that, say, a dog will bite a man.   That is what dogs do.    They don't want to know that man bites a dog, because the world is not supposed to happen like that.  In short, what people think they want is news, but what they really crave is olds. . . Not news but olds, telling people that what they think they already know is true.   -Terry Pratchett, from one of his Discworld novels, quoted on 29

An Ohio State study in 2009 showed people spend 36 percent more time reading an essay if that essay aligns with their opinions.  -30

It's simply easier to believe something if you are presented with examples than it is to accept something presented in numbers or abstract facts.   -70


Every story needs a strong protagonist with whom you can identify.  If they are down on their luck or recently fell from grace, you see them as being approachable.   If they are plucky and face great odds, again, you root for them without having to think about it.  Early on, the protagonist will save someone without having to, and you'll start to like him or her.  On the other side, you need a dastardly antagonist who harms someone for no reason, a person who ignores the rules and wants only to satisfy him-or herself no matter the cost.  The hero or heroine leaves his or her normal world and enters into a new life full of adventure.  Just when it seems as though the protagonist will fail, he or she overcomes whatever has been in the way, sometimes even saving the world in the process.   When the hero or heroine returns to home, he or she has been changed for the better.   82-83

  
 Advertisers use genetic freaks with abnormal symmetry, lit by professionals, altered by makeup artists, and finished off with Photoshop until they are nothing more than realistic cartoons--just like a RealDoll.   134

This is why politicians who bring out charts and graphs tend to fail, and those who use anecdotes tend to win.  Stories make sense on an emotional level, so anything that conjures fear, empathy, or pride will trump confusing statistics.  144

Having a dissenting opinion on movies, music, or clothes, or owning clever or obscure possessions, is the way middle-class people fight one another for status.   They can't out-consume one another because they can't afford it, but they can out-taste one another.  155

If you are trying to communicate something complex, if you have vast knowledge of a subject and someone does not, realize it is going to be difficult to get it across the gulf between your brain and theirs.  The explanation process may become thorny, but don't take it out on the other person.  Just because that person can't see inside you mind doesn't mean he or she is not so smart.  You don't suddenly become telepathic when you are angry, anxious or alarmed.  Keep calm and carry on.  -204