Errornomics: Why We Make Mistakes And What We Can Do To Avoid Them (2009) - Plot & Excerpts
If you still think that you can/should drive a car and talk on your phone or text at the same time, you should read this book. Halliman has put together a nice little introduction to various aspects of human attention and decision making. Although some of it was familiar stuff, I learned a few things and most of the book was interesting enough for me to seek out additional reading on the subject. This book is really good at pointing out the areas in which humans make mistakes and the reason that people are biased to certain ways of thought. A lot of it also relates interestingly to evolution. There are a lot of cool little quizzes that demonstrate this like trying to recall a penny, the confidence quiz, etc. It could do with better summaries and applications at the end of chapters.I always think about this book when people suggest moving to California - that was one of my favourite chapters.Good msg: "People feel more responsible for their actions than they do for their inactions. If we are going to err at something we would rather err by failing to act. That's because we tend to view inaction as a passive event - we didn't do anything. And since we didn't do anything we feel less responsible for the outcome that follows."We regret the prospect of doing something wrong more than failing to do anything at all.Other notable lessons from this book:- we remember things better when we connect meaning to them- we remember things with self-serving biases- we choose things based on frames when we are uncertain (can be influenced subconsciously by music, by wording, by timing, by unrelated information we have just received, anchor numbers)- be wary of 'sales'- we group things together in our memory and this sometimes leads to faulty conclusions- we see the world through rose-coloured glasses, we are biased to be overconfident in ourselves- people prefer to 'wing it' rather than read instructions or practice- when we learn something one way we tend to stick with it, 'functional fixity'- products that are so obvious they require no directions are the most well designed for functionality- our world offers very few constraints in some things, we need to move towards error-free design - simply and build in constraints- the sooner you learn to live with something the happier your will be- we when we consider the impact of any one feature on our well-being we exaggerate its importance - 'focusing illusion'
What do You think about Errornomics: Why We Make Mistakes And What We Can Do To Avoid Them (2009)?
The book does a great job of explaining why we make mistakes, but doesn't offer a toolkit to fix the issues.Examples include: -We tend to find patterns for solving problems, and want to apply one of our pre-baked patterns to most problems we see --- even if our pattern won't work.-The damning of multi-tasking is brought up again. We're not good at multi-tasking; the more we multi-task, the more mistakes we make.The book verily humanizes mistakes - we all make mistakes. He differentiates people via how they react to their mistakes ( blame game vs. learning ); no one is firmly in one camp or the other.
—didi73nadia
A very readable look at all types of human error and why we make them so often. Multi-tasking, over- confidence, not looking at instructions, even sleep deprivation are discussed here with regards to everything from remembering things incorrectly to surgical errors and pilots crashing planes. Despite the subject matter, the read leave one oddly hopeful that if we just admit we're making mistakes, we can avoid them in the future.
—Shyna_jane
echt boeiend en staat vol met leuke weetjes voor op een verjaardag :)
—princesskaylah1
