By: Elysse Burns on March 22, 2024
Reading Bobby Duffy’s Why We’re Wrong About Nearly Everything felt like having a challenging conversation with a responsible and competent friend who encouraged me to “check myself.” It is never easy to hear, “You are delusional.” Duffy states, “The reason we get so many things wrong is a combination of effects of how we think…
By: Kari on March 22, 2024
As I write this, the last call to prayer of the day is sounding all around me. It is the eleventh day of Ramadan. The majority around me are fasting. They are not drinking, eating, swallowing their sputum, or smoking during sunlight hours (approximately 5:30 am until 7:30 pm). Thankfully, today was not very hot…
By: Akwese on March 22, 2024
I once heard it said that the greatest lie of all time is that we think we’re thinking, but in reality, most of the time, we’re simply operating off social conditioning and habit. Upon initially hearing this statement, I couldn’t help but pause and see its truth. I then began wondering how much of what…
By: Julie O'Hara on March 21, 2024
From Being Wrong by Kathryn Schulz and What’s Your Problem by Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg to Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow, I have been fully convinced that I, and everyone else is wrong. Already believing I was wrong made it seem pointless to read another book about being wrong. Wrong, again. According to Bobby Duffy, understanding ‘why’…
By: Diane Tuttle on March 21, 2024
I bristled when I started reading Why We’re Wrong About Nearly Everything by Bobby Duffy this week. After reading the first several chapters, my reaction was that it was just another book confirming what we already read, things aren’t always what they seem. I thought his reference to Kahneman’s book, Thinking, Fast and Slow was…
By: Chris Blackman on March 21, 2024
This text message was from two weeks ago. Doug was my old cellmate (hence his calling me “bunk,” (short for “bunkie”). He just entered rehab (an expensive one at that – $1000.00 a day!!) for the fourth or fifth time. Doug and I shared life together for about two years as bunkmates, or “cellies,” which…
By: Jennifer Eckert on March 21, 2024
“United Nations adviser calls for White people to be stripped of their power,” Fox News Headline. ‘That Sounds like ethnic cleansing’: Clarissa Ward questions lead figure in Israel’s settler movement, CNN News Headline. It’s Official, Biden – Trump set for a rematch, BBC World News. If you are like me and millions of other people,…
By: Joel Zantingh on March 21, 2024
I recently had an amazing holiday! Or was it simply ‘average’? Or was that other holiday better? Bobby Duffy of King’s College London, in a talk about his book, “Why We’re Wrong About Nearly Everything”, quoted a 1994 study by Professors Terrence Mitchell and Leigh Thompson to unpack what they dubbed “rosy retrospective”. [1] In…
By: Shela Sullivan on March 20, 2024
Bobby Duffy is the author of the book, Why We’re Wrong About Nearly Everything: A Theory of Human Misunderstanding. Duffy draws on numerous public-opinion studies conducted by himself and colleagues across various countries, focusing on social and political questions. In his book, Duffy offers several valuable lessons about human cognition, biases and understanding such as:…
By: Graham English on March 20, 2024
In 2018 a Canadian woman rented a black Nissan Sentra sedan. She drove to a nearby Walmart. When she came out of the store she hopped in her car and drove home. However, she jumped in the wrong car, a black Infiniti hatchback, and drove off. It turns out that the owner had gone into…
By: Christy Liner on March 20, 2024
I hate that we have implicit biases and I find it so uncomfortable when they are exposed (although I’m also grateful). Growing up in a conservative state and family, I had biases towards LGBTQ+ population. In recent years some of these were exposed, and thankfully changed. Someone very dear in my life identified as transgender…
By: Chad Warren on March 20, 2024
Name a food with a hole in it… Did you say donuts, cheese, onion rings, bagels? Do you think your answer would match with everyone else’s? If so, you are in the herd; if not, you are the odd one out. Welcome to the game Herd Mentality. It’s a group game my family has enjoyed…
By: Erica Briggs on March 20, 2024
One of my favorite movies is “Waking Life,” first watched almost 25 years ago while teaching in the Black Studies Department at Califoria State University, Long Beach (CSULB). I shared clips from the film with my students and we used them as prompts to critically think and write about our understanding of life. Why We’re…
By: Nancy Blackman on March 20, 2024
If I told you a story about a famous writer, would you believe me, or would you be more inclined to believe the story if you read it in a major magazine or newspaper? This is part of Bobby Duffy’s book Why We’re Wrong About Nearly Everything: A Theory of Human Misunderstanding. As you try…
By: Adam Cheney on March 19, 2024
I get the opportunity regularly to speak to different churches in my area about refugees and immigrants. Sometimes, it is a separate class or a small group that invites me to speak and they are eager to hear more information. Then, other times, it is a brief overview to the whole congregation and then I…
By: Debbie Owen on March 19, 2024
The mood in the sanctuary was somber. After quickly getting some snacks in the dining room and saying hello to some friends, about twenty people returned to the sanctuary for a post-service “talk-back” about the sermon. The sermon was titled, “Jesus was a white guy holding a lamb” as part of the “Unlearning” series. During…
By: Glyn Barrett on March 19, 2024
Please forgive me. I am writing about “Why We Are Wrong About Nearly Everything” on a long-haul flight, so this blog will have a very short supply of cross-referencing with other sources. In a world where so many people are seemingly so sure about what they believe and why, Bobby Duffy’s book is…
By: Jeff Styer on March 18, 2024
“Vote Yes on Issue 1.” Last year Ohio lawmakers voted to hold a special election on August 8th; special elections just months earlier had been outlawed unless a government entity faced a fiscal emergency.[1] The election had only one measure on the ballot, change Ohio’s Constitution to allow future constitutional changes only if 60% of…
By: Noel Liemam on March 17, 2024
In the Summer of 2015 Issue, the Westmont Magazine has a heading titled, “The Moral Leadership of American President,” [1] that speaks to the importance of Moral Leadership in the highest office of the Nation. Couple excerpt from the articles reads, “Moral leadership is in fact a central task of our presidents when it’s done…
By: Akwese on March 15, 2024
In “Leading Out of Who You Are: Discovering the Secret of Undefended Leadership,” Simon Walker invites us to engage leadership on a more personal level, seeing it as a journey of self-awareness that’s fundamentally “about who you are, not what you know or what skills you have.” With this as the foundation, he says that …
