Yet another entry in the long list of pop psychology books. It seems like they all gear up on one or two navel-gazing insights that just about anybody can intu

Yet another entry in the long list of pop psychology books. It seems like they all gear up on one or two navel-gazing insights that just about anybody can intuitively identify with (You have a slow, rational side and a fast, emotional side! Doesn't that explain everything?) and then, they try to run as far as they can with the implications of this overly dumbed-down hypothesis. Carefully cherry-picked statistics from the millions of social phenomena and psychological experiments taking place around the world are sprinkled into the narrative to keep you engaged. (side rant: all of which have their methodological details conveniently obscured to prevent your critical thinking from kicking in, and you are extremely lucky if the sample size is provided, much less any attempt at a p-value or other discussion of statistical significance. Nope, it's usually just "Amazingly enough, 89% of ...") Example: the silly birdie vs. bogie data presented in this little article. Great, people want birdies more than they don't want bogies, and perhaps it ties back into some aspect of your central hypothesis. But how many other oversimplified statements about human nature could I "prove" with this example? Probably hundreds. Maybe it's a completely rational strategy on the part of the golfer, since their experience has taught them that the (emotional|physical|mental) effort required to sink a birdie putt is not as productive in the long-term as at least making par on every hole. That kind of alternative thinking doesn't matter though, so we simply move to the next experiment and supportive conclusion. Repeat ad infinitum, until we've fulfilled the length requirement for a novel. No, I did not enjoy Freakonomics (can you tell?).