The Age of Magical Overthinking: Notes on Modern Irrationality

Good read für morgens und in der bahn

I really love Amanda Montell. But I do prefer her linguistic works. "The Age of magical Overthinking" is an essay collection about biases e.g. recency bias, Ikea-bias, confirmation bias etc. She starts off each essay by presenting a personal anectode which fits the bias and then continues to tell the reader about the research done in that field. I found most of the chapters hard to follow because Montell doesn't clearly seperate the sections about personal tellings from the ones about facts. I wish she would have structured those chapters more clearly. C

Honestly, this book just wasn’t for me. The title sounded super promising, but the content didn’t match at all. It felt more like a mix of personal stories and random celebrity gossip than an actual exploration of overthinking. I didn’t really get much out of it, and I know the author has written better books. This one just wasn’t it.