A review by nitin_kishore
How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer

4.0

Some of the most important take aways from this book are that people who are rational have found a way to regulate their emotions. They are not absent. That was a misconception I lived with for a while but both parts of yourself are necessary in making decisions. If you let your emotions cloud you, they will look for patterns and lead you towards illogical short term gains without regard for long term price to pay. For easy and quick decisions, be more rational and think it through logically. For difficult ones, assimilate all information, then revisit it later but use your instincts and gut feeling this time. That's how you balance it. With respect to the morality of our mind, one death is a tragedy but a million is a statistic, as said by Stalin. Makes a lot of sense. This was a good read.