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"Some of the world's smartest people explain stupidity, among them Daniel Kahneman, Dan Ariely, Alison Gopnik, Howard Gardner, Antonio Damasio, Aaron James, and Ryan Holiday. "We need books like this one." --Steven Pinker And so I proclaim, o idiots of every stripe and morons of all kinds, this is your moment of glory: this book speaks only to you. But you will not recognize yourselves... Stupidity is all around us, from the coworker who won't stop...
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A journey into the hidden psychological influences that derail our decision-making. Why is it so difficult to end a doomed relationship? Why do we listen to advice just because it came from someone "important"? Why are we more likely to fall in love when there's danger involved? Here, organizational thinker Ori Brafman and his brother, psychologist Rom Brafman, answer these questions and more. Drawing on research from the fields of social psychology,...
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The Darwin Awards commemorate those who improve our gene pool by removing themselves from it, showing us just how uncommon common sense can be! Meet the absentminded terrorist who opens a mail bomb returned to him for insufficient postage. Marvel at the thief who steals electrical wires before shutting off the current. Gape at the would-be pilot who flies his lawn chair suspended from helium balloons into air-traffic lanes. These tales of trial...
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"Considered Gustave Flaubert's masterpiece, Bouvard and Pecuchet opens with two middle-aged copy-clerks who become fast friends after meeting on a city bench and discovering their shared habit of writing their names in their hats: "I should say so! Someone could walk off with mine at the office!" When a small inheritance allows Bouvard and Pecuchet to retire early and move to the country, they use their newfound leisure time to satisfy their curiosity...
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"Where does the desire for endless rules, regulations, and bureaucracy come from? How did we come to spend so much of our time filling out forms? And is it really a cipher for state violence? To answer these questions, anthropologist David Graeber ... traces the peculiar and unexpected ways we relate to bureaucracy today, and reveals how it shapes our lives in ways we may not even notice"--Jacket.
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Laurence Gonzales turns his talent for gripping narrative, knowledge of the way our minds and bodies work, and bottomless curiosity about the world to the topic of how we can best use the lessons of our evolutionary history to overcome the hazards of everyday life. He finds that natural laws profoundly affect our actions, and he reveals the hidden causes and costs of our behavior, whether as individuals or as a species whose decisions may be leading
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Exposes the pervasive and often hidden impulses that influence our everyday decisions. Countless acts of self-destruction and sabotage take place in our families, in our communities, in our circle of friends. Despite good intentions, "good people" do very bad things--often without understanding why. Ford guides us into the heart of the duality that unknowingly operates within each one of us: the force that compels us to give and receive love and be...
11) Idiocracy
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Joe Bowers is an average Joe. He is not the sharpest tool in the shed. He becomes part of a government experiment to go into hibernation. The experiment goes awry and Bowers awakens in the year 2505 to find a society so dumbed-down by mass commercialism and mindless TV programming that he's become the smartest guy on the planet. Now it's up to this average Joe to get human evolution back on the right track.
12) Mindfulness
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Ellen J. Langer, Harvard professor of psychology, determines that the mindless following of routine and other automatic behaviors lead to much error, pain and a predetermined course of life. In this thought-provoking book, her research has been "translated" for the lay reader. With anecdotes and metaphors, Langer explains how the mindless -- as opposed to the mindful -- develop mindsets of categories, associations, habits of thought born of repetition...
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This sixth installment features all-new stories of the human race’s lowest rung on the evolutionary ladder, and is the latest addition to this successful brand. Aside from the bestselling book and audio book collection that has sold over 1.5 million copies, the Darwin Awards brand includes a website that gets over 1 million hits per month and has over 100,000 newsletter subscribers, 2 miniature book editions, a movie starring Winona Ryder and Joseph...
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The Darwin Awards 4 commemorates those who improve our gene pool by removing themselves from it, showing us just how uncommon common sense can be!
Meet the absentminded terrorist who opens a mail bomb returned to him for insufficient postage. Marvel at the thief who steals electrical wires before shutting off the current. Gape at the would-be pilot who flies his lawn chair suspended from helium balloons into air-traffic lanes.
These tales of trial...
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It's not feelings of superiority that make us suspect the universe is filled with dumb people: The universe really is filled with dumb people, as it's easy to see in the pages of Leland Gregory's sharp offering, Hey Idiot! Gregory, a former Saturday Night Live writer, is the smart cookie who's previously showed us gray matter-challenged examples in everything from the criminal world to the hallowed halls of government. This time, though, everyone,...