Loserthink: How Untrained Brains Are Ruining America

What is loserthink?

If you've been on social media lately, or turned on your TV, you may have noticed there are a lot of dumb ideas floating around out there.

"We know when history will repeat and when it won't."
"We can tell the difference between evidence and coincidences."
"The simplest explanation is usually true."
"Stay in your channel."

Wrong, wrong, dangerous, and wrong!

These false beliefs are the result of what Scott Adams, the creator of the Dilbert comic and a lifelong student of group psychology, calls loserthink. Loserthink is the epidemic of sneaky mental habits trapping its victims in their own bubbles of reality. Even the smartest and most educated among us can slip into its seductive grasp. If we're not careful, loserthink would have us believe that every Trump supporter is a bigoted racist, addicts should be responsible for fixing the opioid epidemic, any form of gun control is a slippery slope to full confiscation, and that your relationship fell apart simply because you chewed with your mouth open.

This book will teach you how to spot and avoid loserthink before it starts to influence you--and will give you scripts to respond when it's being brandished against you, whether by well-intentioned friends, strangers on the internet, or political pundits. You'll learn the best defense against emotionally powerful but vacuous arguments and how to spot the underlying causes of loserthink, like the inability to get ego out of your decisions, thinking with words instead of reasons, failing to imagine alternative explanations, and making too much of coincidences.

Using his patented blend of humor and social satire, along with candid examples of falling prey to loserthink from his own past, Adams offers elegant analytical frameworks for clear thinking, evoking the mental models of scientists, economists, entrepreneurs, and artists.

Your bubble of reality doesn't have to be a prison. This book will show you how to break free--and, what's more, to be among the most perceptive and respected thinkers in every conversation.