Meike's Reviews > The Age of Magical Overthinking: Notes on Modern Irrationality

While this memoir-esque essay collection doesn't offer cutting edge, brand new insights, it's certainly smart, entertaining and timely. In eleven chapters, Montell ponders
- the halo effect
- proportionality bias
- sunk cost fallacy
- zero-sum bias
- survivorship biast
- recency illusion
- overconfidence bias
- illusory truth effect
- confirmation bias
- declinism
- IKEA effect.

What I particularly enjoyed is how she connects these, let's be real, rather well-known cognitive biases that amount to magical thinking to her personal life, pop culture and historic events, thus giving us entertaining examples that are often way too relatable: We might think that we're above these delusions, but then Montell tells her stories, and trust me, you'll also be like "oh no, I've been there". It's just a non-judgemental, frequently funny strategy to alert readers to tendencies that can also lead societies down dark, dangerous paths. To entertain an audience while almost secretly teaching lessons about cognitive shortcomings is an effective way to go: It's more empathetic than confrontative without rendering the inherent dangers of magical thinking harmless.

So yes, this isn't groundbreaking research or anything, but I liked the concept and enjoyed listening to the audio book.