Alan Jacobs - How to Think: A Survival Guide for a World at Odds

Imagine that you and your partner are buying a car. Youre not a pure impulse buyer, so youre not going to choose on appearance alone (unless, of course, a car is so hideously ugly that youd be ashamed to be seen in it). You know that there are many factors to keep in mind, and you try to remember what they all aregas mileage, reliability, comfort, storage space, seating, sound system. Do we need extra features, like a GPS?, you might ask. How much more would it cost to have that installed?

A checklist helps, but its not going to tell you which items on the list should have greater priority and which less. Maybe youd say in general that comfort is more important than gas mileage, but what if the cars an absolute guzzler? That could be a deal breaker.

Anyway, here you are at the used car lot. This blue Toyota looks nice, and the reviews on the major websites are positive. You look it over, you sit in it and consult your lumbar region: Everything feel pretty good down there? You take it for a test drive and it seems to you that the ride is a little rough, though it could be that youre paying too much attention and have made yourself oversensitive, like the princess in The Princess and the Pea. You try to factor in that possibility.

You go through this ritual three or four times and then you make your decision, which youre relatively pleased with until you get home and your partner comments that the obviously best choice would have been the one you ruled out at the beginning because you thought it looked hideous, at which point you reflect that maybe you shouldnt have tried to make this decision on your own.

This is what thinking is: not the decision itself but what goes into the decision, the consideration, the assessment. Its testing your own responses and weighing the available evidence; its grasping, as best you can and with all available and relevant senses, what is, and its also speculating, as carefully and responsibly as you can, about what might be. And its knowing when not to go it alone, and whom you should ask for help.

The uncertainties that necessarily accompany predicting the futurenot only do you not know what will happen but you dont even know how youll feel about what happens, whether youll eventually stop noticing that uncomfortable seat or will want to drive the car off a cliff because of itmean that thinking will always be an art rather than a science. (Science can help, though; science is our friend.)

My father had an almost unerring ability to buy bad cars, for a simple reason: He never actually thought about it. He acted always on impulse and instinct, and his impulses and instincts, like mine and yours, werent very reliable. But he liked acting impulsively, and I believe he would rather have owned a lousy car than devoted research and planning to the task of purchasing one. (Verily, he had his reward.) But I was always annoyed with him because it seemed obvious to me that buying a decent automobile isnt that hard. Yes, no matter what you do, you can end up with a lemon, but with due diligence you dramatically reduce the likelihood of that happening. Its a matter of observing the percentages and refusing to heed your immediate impulsesa bit like playing poker, in that respect.

The problem is, as things-we-think-about go, buying a car is one of the simpler and more straightforward cases. It contains all the key elements, but its considerably less complicated than the issues and questionspolitical, social, religiousthat really befuddle us and set us at odds with our fellow residents of this vale of tears. If everything we have to think about were as easy as buying a car, then Id need only to write a blog post or a few tweets to set us all on the right path. Instead, Ive had to write this book.