ghassbomb 's review for:

Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions by Dan Ariely

3.0

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My Blogpost

Starts off decent, but as the writer uses the exact same format for each chapter it gets old quick. The format itself is:

Bring up example

Talk about how it’s related to your hypothesis

Talk about how you experimented on your hypothesis

What we can learn from it all

Certainly, a solid application of the scientific method (mostly), but it gets dry for the layman reader. I can’t personally confirm whether most—or even any—of the lessons outlined are valid, but they seem reasonable to me.

But what I do know is that, as the chapters go on, Dan tries to explain the same problems of the human condition that many other materialists have tried to. No offense, but this is certainly taking on a task that is somewhat above him, or at least above the topic of behavioral economics. I’ve stopped my notes past Chapter 9 for this reason.