{"id":11650,"date":"2021-03-26T16:16:22","date_gmt":"2021-03-26T23:16:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/?p=11650"},"modified":"2021-03-26T16:17:52","modified_gmt":"2021-03-26T23:17:52","slug":"nonfiction-notes-adam-grants-think-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/2021\/03\/26\/nonfiction-notes-adam-grants-think-again\/","title":{"rendered":"Nonfiction Notes: Adam Grant’s THINK AGAIN"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Adam Grant, THINK AGAIN: The Power of Knowing What You Don\u2019t Know (2021)<\/p>\n

This is a recent book, still on the bestseller lists, by an author I had not previously encountered. He\u2019s a professor and TED talker. The book seems a little bit self-helpy, so I came to it guardedly. It seems to me that many self-help books identify a problem they claim you have, and then tell you how to fix it, to their advantage. Like that snake-oil salesman*.<\/p>\n

At the same time, this book presents itself as one about \u201cknowing what you don\u2019t know,\u201d which suggests to me the essence of science: being willing to update beliefs with new evidence, of acknowledging that what you think is true may not be true forever, about how to be a life-long learner.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

So, given that I already understand how conclusions should be provisional and subject to new evidence, what else can this book tell me? This is what asked myself before I read it. (And the answer is: the distinction of roles in point #1 below. There also several points, below, that confirmed my existing principles and conclusions. Is this therefore an example of motivated reasoning, of simply reading to confirm my existing beliefs? Actually no; I didn\u2019t realize what the book would be about, exactly, before I read it. That it confirmed much of what I\u2019d already concluded suggests to me that there is a reality out there that, no matter from what direction you approach it, converges to the same place.)<\/p>\n

I won\u2019t summarize the entire book, though it is effectively written with many anecdotes and personal examples. The most striking one, the first of many, is how among a group of 1949 firefighters in Montana, one survived by, counterintuitively, using matches to burn a patch of grass, which he then lay on as the big fire passed over him. He was mentally fit; he had the ability to rethink and unlearn.<\/p>\n

How the popular story about the frog in the pot of water\u2026 isn\u2019t true. The frog jumps out as soon as the water gets uncomfortably warm.<\/p>\n

Lots of stories like that.<\/p>\n

This is a book that, as I didn\u2019t notice before I started it, summarizes itself in the author\u2019s \u201ctop thirty practical takeaways\u201d (pp251-257). So I\u2019ll summarize my own take-aways from among those points.<\/p>\n