The Gullibility Episode

Psychologist Maria Konnikova claims that con artists have existed for as long as human communities have. Con artists are people with an uncanny ability to gain someone’s trust, swindle them, and disappear before the victim even grasps what’s happened—a ruse known as a confidence game, or “con.”

In The Confidence Game, Konnikova uses social psychology to reveal the inner workings of cons: What makes a good con artist, and what makes a person an easy target, or “mark”? Through her analysis of common human biases, Konnikova demonstrates that a con artist doesn’t just rely on their own wiles—they rely on our instinctive confidence in the stories we tell ourselves. Konnikova suggests that by understanding these manipulation tactics, we might learn to identify and extract ourselves from cons. In this guide, we’ll also include actionable advice for avoiding cons and explore how the manipulation tactics apply in more recent examples.

In The Art of Thinking Clearly, Rolf Dobelli breaks down the most common logical fallacies that inhibit decision-making, including confirmation bias, social proof, and hindsight bias. Dobelli aims to help people recognize and overcome these fallacies so they can make better decisions.

In this guide, we’ll explore Dobelli’s main fallacies, including those caused by humanity’s past as hunter-gatherers and those caused by other sources such as misinterpretation of cause and effect. Along the way, we’ll compare and contrast Dobelli’s ideas with other experts on logical thinking, such as Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Daniel Kahneman. We’ll also provide concrete steps to overcome illogical thinking and explore why logical fallacies occur.

The secret to influencing others is more passive than you might think. In Just Listen, Mark Goulston explains that if you want to change someone’s mind or behavior, listening is the most important step. When you listen effectively, the person you’re trying to connect with feels heard, understood, and valuable, and motivates them to open up to you in return.

Goulston is a psychiatrist and professor, whose experience ranges from talking down suicidal individuals to training FBI negotiators to helping business executives communicate for success. He claims that the key to convince anyone to open up to you is to just listen.

In this guide, we’ll examine Goulston’s listening principles and strategies and compare them to books such as Leadership: Strategy and Tactics. We’ll also discuss what other psychiatrists and researchers have to say about Goulston’s advice and add nuances and actionable tips to help you master the art of listening to influence.

In The Art of Thinking Clearly, Rolf Dobelli breaks down the most common logical fallacies that inhibit decision-making, including confirmation bias, social proof, and hindsight bias. Dobelli aims to help people recognize and overcome these fallacies so they can make better decisions.

In this guide, we’ll explore Dobelli’s main fallacies, including those caused by humanity’s past as hunter-gatherers and those caused by other sources such as misinterpretation of cause and effect. Along the way, we’ll compare and contrast Dobelli’s ideas with other experts on logical thinking, such as Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Daniel Kahneman. We’ll also provide concrete steps to overcome illogical thinking and explore why logical fallacies occur.

We’re so self-confident in our rationality that we think all our decisions are well-considered. When we choose a job, decide how to spend our time, or buy something, we think we’ve considered all the relevant factors and are making the optimal choice. In reality, our minds are riddled with biases leading to poor decision making. We ignore data that we don't see, and we weigh evidence inappropriately.

Thinking, Fast and Slow is a masterful book on psychology and behavioral economics by Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman. Learn your two systems of thinking, how you make decisions, and your greatest vulnerabilities to bad decisions.

Every decision carries risk. We don’t always think in terms of risk, and maybe that’s why we’re prone to making irrational decisions. But what if we worked on keeping risk at the forefront of our minds?

Annie Duke discusses how her decades-long poker career helped her develop decision-making strategies based on the idea that all decisions are bets. Being immersed in the game enabled her to observe how people make decisions in a setting where every choice leads to a clear outcome—winning or losing money. That’s what a bet is: a decision with quantifiable risk. In our guide to Thinking in Bets, you’ll find out how to work around your biases, objectively evaluate your beliefs, learn from your past, and ultimately get better at making good decisions.

Every decision carries risk. We don’t always think in terms of risk, and maybe that’s why we’re prone to making irrational decisions. But what if we worked on keeping risk at the forefront of our minds?

Annie Duke discusses how her decades-long poker career helped her develop decision-making strategies based on the idea that all decisions are bets. Being immersed in the game enabled her to observe how people make decisions in a setting where every choice leads to a clear outcome—winning or losing money. That’s what a bet is: a decision with quantifiable risk. In our guide to Thinking in Bets, you’ll find out how to work around your biases, objectively evaluate your beliefs, learn from your past, and ultimately get better at making good decisions.

Making mistakes and believing things that aren’t true are unavoidable parts of human nature, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. After all, it’s our beliefs, right or wrong, that let us function in our daily lives, and it’s only through mistakes that we can learn and grow. In Being Wrong, journalist Kathryn Schulz argues that we shouldn’t try to avoid mistakes completely. Instead, we should change how we view our mistakes—and maybe even laugh at ourselves once in a while.

In this guide, we’ll explain how mistakes enrich our lives, why our senses and beliefs often fool us, and how to deal with making mistakes without falling victim to shame and denial. We’ll also draw on the wider world of psychology and science to explore the reasons behind human error, how to accept it in a healthy way, and how we can dodge mistakes or use them to our advantage.

In The Art of Thinking Clearly, Rolf Dobelli breaks down the most common logical fallacies that inhibit decision-making, including confirmation bias, social proof, and hindsight bias. Dobelli aims to help people recognize and overcome these fallacies so they can make better decisions.

In this guide, we’ll explore Dobelli’s main fallacies, including those caused by humanity’s past as hunter-gatherers and those caused by other sources such as misinterpretation of cause and effect. Along the way, we’ll compare and contrast Dobelli’s ideas with other experts on logical thinking, such as Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Daniel Kahneman. We’ll also provide concrete steps to overcome illogical thinking and explore why logical fallacies occur.