YOU ARE NOT SO SMART (A Celebration of Self Delusion)

About:

You Are Not So Smart is a blog I, David McRaney, started to publicly explore our self delusions through narrative journalism.

When it started, I had a love for psychology, some skills as a writer, and a lot of curiosity, but I had no idea how much material was out there to explore. So far, this has been fun, enlightening, and humbling.

The central theme of You Are Not So Smart is that you are unaware of how unaware you are. There is branch of psychology and an old-but-growing body of research with findings that suggest you have little idea why you act or think the way you do. Despite this, you continue to create narratives to explain your own feelings, thoughts, and behaviors, and these narratives – no matter how inaccurate – become the story of your life.

You seem to be able to see other people deluding themselves all the time – your friends, your family, celebrities, politicians. The mental pratfalls of others seem so obvious, but you have a hard time seeing those shortcomings in yourself. You Are Not So Smart is a fun exploration of the ways you and everyone else tends to develop undeserved confidence in human perception, motivation, and behavior.

I hope after reading You Are Not So Smart and recovering from each head-spinning epiphany, you’ll rediscover a humility and reconnect with the stumbling, fumbling community of man trying to make sense of things the best we can.    READ MORE 

YANSS Podcast – Episode Two

 Remember when the United States stock market crashed a few
years back? You know, the implosion famously featuring
credit default swaps and collateralized debt obligations?
Does it seem strange to you that all those experts who
couldn’t predict the economic collapse are still on
television giving advice and offering predictions?

The people who were wrong continue to work because they
provide you with an illusion of knowledge, a belief that the
market can be understood by one person, and that person's
understanding can become your understanding. They continue
to claim insight into chaotic, impossibly complex nebulae of
shifting data, and they continue to profess powers of
divination even though research shows they are slightly less
reliable than a coin toss. They can still get paid to squawk
because they continue to make their claims with confidence.
No one wants a sage who deals in maybes.
  READ MORE