INTRODUCTION
     To teach how to live without certainty, and yet without      
being paralyzed by hesitation, is perhaps the chief thing      
that philosophy, in our age, can still do for those who      
study it.  Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy      
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1945, p. xiv) 
     The brain is the crucial erotic organ in the body -- along 
with being the crucial element in survival, occupational success, 
capacity to enjoy life, and ability to contribute to the welfare 
of others.  With this book you can learn to use your brain more 
effectively and more wisely, and therefore live your life better. 
     The book has two themes. The main theme is teaching ways to 
use your mind -- the thinking machinery in your brain -- so that 
you can improve your skills.  For example, the book teaches you 
sound methods for making business decisions, choosing life goals, 
and getting to sleep quickly.  The secondary theme is exploring 
the similarities and the differences among the various types of 
thinking so that we can better understand the various modes.  For 
example, the book asks what (if any) elements are common to a) 
business decision-making, b) controlling fears, and c) setting 
loose your mystical imagination. 
     The book also examines some key concepts necessary to 
understand our social world so that we can engage that world 
effectively.  One example is the idea of "spontaneously 
developing cooperation" or "self-organizing systems" discovered 
by Bernard Mandeville, David Hume, and Adam Smith, which helps us 
understand the evolutionary growth of language, common law, 
society, and economy.  It was this idea, which came to him by way 
of Malthus, that constituted the key element in Darwin's great 
biological theory of evolution.  Lack of understanding of the 
operation of this principle in economics - the "hidden hand" - 
was a root cause of the disastrous imposition of the centrally-
planned economies of 20th century Eastern Europe and China.  
     Another example of a key concept is recent theory of human 
cognition, which teaches us how to better understand how other 
individuals behave and also helps us live more comfortably with 
our own emotions.  This theory, the basis of cognitive-behavioral 
therapy which is the first-ever scientifically-proven 
psychological treatment for depression, also shares basic 
insights with the ancient Greeks' discussion of logical 
fallacies, and with the principles of science and the pitfalls in 
doing research; it also has has much in common with the theory 
and practice of political rhetoric. 
     The word "thinking" in the title of this book refers to a 
wide variety of mental activities.  When people talk about 
thinking they often are referring to problem-solving.  But 
problem-solving is just one among several types of reasoning; 
logic and "muddling through" are others.  And in turn, reasoning 
is just one among many types of thinking.  For example, idea-
creation and mystical thinking are other and quite different 
sorts of thinking than are problem-solving and logic.  (This does 
not imply that the product of mystical thinking should be called 
"knowledge," however.) 
     Indeed, most books with "thinking" in their titles cover a 
less broad field of thought than does this one.1   If a book on "thinking" is 
written by a philosopher, logic and logical fallacies usually constitute the main content; and if written by a psychologist, the 
book is usually a summary of technical experimental work on the thinking process.  Well and good.  They have their work to do, and 
I trust that this book has its work to do, too.  There need be no competition among us, but I hope that there is no confusion, 
either. 
     Some of the types of thinking discussed here are used widely and are well-understood scientifically. For example, cost-
benefit analysis is a well-established technique in business and public administration; the principles of legal thinking also are 
well-understood.  Some other types of thinking have long been studied and much is known about them, yet little of that knowledge 
is scientific; one example is meditation, and another example (until recently) is the alleviation of depression.  Still other 
types of thinking are poorly understood even though people have thought and written much about them over the centuries; an example 
is one's choices about the persons and groups toward whom one will act loyally, choices that often are not even made explicitly.  
     The following questions illustrate the contents of the book:
          *Should you buy, or should you rent, a truck for your business?

          *How should you choose a husband or wife?
          *How can you produce a copious supply of worthwhile ideas about how your city can reduce infant mortality among its 
poorer families?
          *What is a sound method to forecast the trend of the world's food supply for a century hence?
          *How can you reduce the amount of time you spend feeling blue after you suffer a failure or a rejection in your work 
life?

          *Will you report, or not report, your income from part-time work to the tax authorities?  Will you then lie about it if 
caught?           
          *How will you think about the subject entitled "God?"
          *How strictly will you raise your children?
          *What kind of person will you try to make others think you are, and how will you create that impression?
          *What basic questions about your life will you ask yourself?
          *How can you get to sleep quickly and reliably?
          *When you are coaching the Boston Celtics and Larry Bird misses 37 of 57 shots, should you assume that he is in a slump 
and therefore take him out of the line-up?
     Though the book aims to improve your thinking, the value of a particular kind of good thinking is not always obvious.  The 
French say "she has the virtues of her vices," and the saying also applies in reverse.  A quality that helps you in one context 
can damage you in another, and vice versa.  For example, being an obnoxious curmudgeon can ruin your relationships with people you 
care about, but it may be an useful trait when you are a patient in a hospital and need to get attention.  Similarly, knowing 
yourself too well, or seeing clearly both sides of moral questions -- your own and the other person's -- may disable you  in a 
conflict.  Assessing whether a particular kind of thinking is useful, or not useful, requires that you know the particular goal 
and the particular situation. 

     Of course we can prefer some ways of thinking to others on esthetic grounds; the clear thinking of a writer like David Hume 
is more appealing than the muddy thinking of some youths, just as a graceful tennis professional is more fun to watch than an 
awkward player in junior high-school.  And we can judge some choices on the basis of values; most of us would agree that 
generosity toward a local charitable organization is "better" than miserliness or flagrant conspicuous consumption.  But our main 
test of a way of thinking is its efficacy. 
     Some of the most distinguished practitioners of the burgeoning field of decision-making have wondered about the validity of 
even the basic tools.  For example, James March (1988, p. 33) wrote: 
     [A] student asked whether it was conceivable that the      practical procedures for decision making implicit in theories      
of choice might make actual human decisions worse rather than      better.  What is the empirical evidence, he asked, that human      
choice is improved by knowledge of decision theory or by      application of the various engineering forms of rational      
choice?2

     March offered no answer that satisfied himself.
     Though it will not constitute the scientific proof that the student sought, perhaps this experiment will give you some 
confidence in the validity of the thinking methods provided here.  In 1973, I spent one evening almost every week playing poker, 
using the method described in Chapter 8x.  That method is little more than acting in accord with the simple mathematical 
probabilities known to almost all players, and bluffing only randomly and without strategy.  (The "little more" is a psychological 
rule that Chapter 8X teaches.)  I also applied the method for several days at the gaming tables in Las Vegas when I gave a talk 
there (on library science and statistics, not gambling).  The method succeeded sufficiently well that I paid income tax on several 
thousands of dollars of winnings that year -- which I was particularly glad to do because I hoped to write this book someday, and 
I wanted to be able to offer this testimonial publicly.  (Then I stopped playing.) 
     That experiment also makes another point nicely:  Sound thinking in one context is poor thinking in another.  The method I 
used in serious poker games would keep you from being invited again for a nickel-ante boisterous game whose aim is fun and 
sociability rather than making money. 
     Those readers who come to this volume seeking elevated discourse about the conduct of life may feel at first that discussion 
of such subjects as the choice among prices or among locations for a business is too business-like for you, too nitty-gritty.  But 
I hope that you will proceed beyond that initial distaste.  In my view, the study of business (as also the study of engineering) 
is as much a liberal art as is the study of ancient history or geology.  
     Practical workaday studies also help you understand the nature of everyday life for the farmers, bakers, candlestickmakers, 
and homemakers who constitute most of humanity.  Mastering a practical discipline -- which can only come from practice -- can also 
immunize you against the amazingly nonsensical and sometimes dangerous flights into abstract thought that have afflicted highly-
educated professional "intellectuals" century after century -- including the abstract foundations of Communism, Nazism, and 
assorted metaphysical doctrines such as Platonism.  (Luckily, most of these abstract systems have never escaped the walls of 
universities.)  A grounding in practicalities may not guarantee your safety from such crazy fugues.  But it can increase your 
resistance to them.  Indeed, this was implicit in the ancient Jewish religious policy that rabbis should earn their livelihoods 
from ordinary trades rather than from religious instruction (a policy honored mostly in the breach, however, then as now.) 
     Several quite general ideas pop up again and again in the various chapters.  These ideas are discussed in the concluding 
chapter.  And an even more general idea underlies these general ideas -- that opposite ideas often fertilize each other and lead 
to a greater synthesis.  Niels Bohr somewhere wrote that "a deep truth is one whose opposite is also true."  He was referring to 
the natural sciences, but the idea certainly is true in the human sciences.  It may not seem "logical" that an idea and its 
opposite can both be true.  However, apparent opposites often are not in opposition; they may refer to different domains, or they 
may operate in alternation.  
     This attitude of appreciating opposites -- which has much in common with Hegel's idea about the benefits of dialectical 
opposition -- is the opposite of the thought of the Greeks that moderation -- the golden mean between the endpoints -- is the 
proper course of conduct.  (Of course the deep truth is that both this and the Grecian viewpoints are sound, yes?) 
     Two apparently-contradictory observations about human thinking may whet your interest in our subject.  On the one hand, much 
of the thinking of each of us is exceedingly imperfect, and often wholly erroneous.  As John Stuart Mill put it, "while the 
thoughts of mankind have on many subjects worked themselves practically right, the thinking power remains as weak as ever" (A 
System of Logic, Longman, p. 285).  On the other hand, the human species nevertheless progresses in knowledge and in the material 
basis of existence, and most of us get through our lives tolerably well.  These observations are not truly contradictory, however.  
Both are inevitable given the structure of our surroundings, the biological capacities of our thinking apparatus, and the fact 
that our species is still alive.  
     How can it be that things go well and better, even though our individual thinking is imperfect and on average improves little 
or not at all?  One reason is that our group thinking is often better than our individual thinking; some people's good judgment 
keeps others' bad judgment from causing disaster.  Another reason is that group trial-and-error evolves into better ways of 
living; this apparently was the history of preventive measures against epidemics in Europe in the middle ages.  Individual trial-
and-error also improves our individual ways.  (On the other hand, some strong forces also oppose our personal improvement, perhaps 
especially our great confidence that our thinking processes are already sound and satisfactory.3 
     Here are a few examples of the deep-rooted and pervasive 
nature of bad thinking:  
     *For decades, children in the U. S. were taught to brush 
their teeth vertically.  Suddenly the dental profession issued 
the ukase that teeth should be brushed horizontally.  This is 
good reason to believe that the old prescription was not 
supported by valid scientific research.  And casual inquiries 
have elicited no scientific evidence for the new prescription, 
either.  Yet much of the population shifts to the new method when 
told to do so. 
     *For two centuries, the entire economics profession has 
known that -- except in the most unusual circumstances -- free 
trade benefits countries which practice it.  A country is better 
off with a free-trade policy even if its trading partners 
practice protectionism.  Yet almost no country practices free 
trade fully, and politicians regularly re-invent the old 
discredited arguments against it.  Nor is this wholly a matter of 
special-interest politics.  Test this for yourself by trying to 
convince someone of the virtues of free trade.  
     *For twelve years starting in 1966 when I first published 
the idea, I tried without success to arrange a trial of the 
volunteer system for handling airplane oversales.  I could not 
induce a single airline to try it for one day in one city at one 
ticket counter, even though I offered strong evidence that the 
first airline to adopt the system could score a smashing 
promotional success.  Nor could I get the then-controlling Civil 
Aeronautics Board to encourage a trial.  Everyone in authority 
said that the scheme was crazy and could not work.  Then by good 
luck, the person who became chairman of the CAB grasped the 
argument.  (He was the first economist ever to hold the job, and 
a voluntary auction plan is the sort of scheme that economists 
understand.)  He therefore pushed the airlines to adopt it.  The 
system succeeded instantly and completely, presenting none of the 
difficulties that "experts" foresaw.  Many of you readers have 
seen this for yourselves when you have had tickets for an 
oversold flight, and you may even have benefited from winning the 
auction and getting free tickets or other pay off for waiting for 
the next flight. 
     *Since time immemorial, people have paid hard-earned money 
to buy worthless potions for their real or supposed ills, often 
doing damage to themselves in the process.  (Exercise:  Check 
your friends' use of vitamins, and discuss with them why they 
take the pills every day.) 
     *Most of the remarks of sports writers and play-by-play 
commentators are scientifically-disproven nonsense, including all 
analysis of "momentum", "slumps", "hot hands", and so forth.  
Equally unprofitable are the "picks" of stockbrokers and 
racetrack touts.  Yet people pay hard cash for this non-
information and are confident that the tips have value.  And some 
people lose their entire nest-eggs to con-men who convince the 
suckers that the con-men know something that they (the con-men) 
cannot possibly know. 
     *Though men have worn neckties for many years, and though no 
new technology was required for the innovation, it was not until 
the 1960's or 1970's that ties came to have the little loop 
behind the front part to keep the underneath tail from becoming 
disorderly.  Instead, men resorted to tiepins, or to putting the 
tail inside the shirt.  Why was this loop not invented and 
disseminated earlier? 
     *Resistance to new ideas is illustrated by the fate of 
Earnshaw Cook's proven tactics for winning baseball.  For decades 
the tactics languished untested even in Little League games.  The 
only manager brave enough to adopt any of them, Davey Johnson of 
the New York Mets who has a master's degree in mathematics [check 
Thomas Boswell, Heart of the Order], cleverly restricted his 
usage to the final innings of tight games; to do more would risk 
the ire of players and fans who could not be convinced that the 
scientifically tested ideas are better than the wisdom of the 
ages. 
     *Within the same city, there is great variation in prices 
for the same auto repair.  A consumer organization's survey of 
the Washington D.C. area found that the cost of replacing the 
water pump on a 1984 Toyota ranged from $120 to $442.  Nor do 
prices indicate quality.  Consumers were more satisfied with 
repairs at low-priced shops than at high-priced shops.  The 
consumer complaint rate is much higher at repair shops with the 
highest price levels than at repair shops with the lowest price 
levels -- .54 versus .16 complaints per mechanic, respectively, 
with the other price-level complaint rates neatly spaced between 
(Washington Consumers' Checkbook, Summer, 1988, Figure 3).  And I 
have read of a finding by a medical team that physicians with 
high incomes are no more competent than physicians with low 
incomes.  Yet people repeat the old saw, "You get what you pay 
for."  
     *Ignaz Semmelweiss discovered that the childbed fever which 
killed a huge proportion of women who gave birth in Viennese 
hospitals could be prevented by physicians washing their hands 
between working in the pathology laboratory and assisting at 
births.  But despite overwhelming evidence of an astounding drop 
in the number of mothers dying as a result of such prophylaxis, 
Semmelweiss could not convince his colleagues to change their 
practices -- seemingly due to personal resentment and envy.  As 
his frustration increased, Semmelweiss lost patience, and his 
resulting immoderate rhetoric then enabled his enemies to dispose 
of him as a crank. 
     *For at least two decades the best agricultural economists 
have agreed that the prospect for the world's food production is 
very bright.  And all official statistics show continual 
improvement in the diet of the world's people, on average.  Yet 
the news stories usually suggest the opposite, and they pay the 
most attention to a single Washington forecaster who is held in 
contempt by the best-respected academic scholars.  Consequently 
the U. S. public overwhelmingly believes that the world's food 
situation has been getting worse rather than better. 
     Despite evidence of our great fallibility, people tend to be 
quite sure that their thinking is sound even when it is 
erroneous.  (Ninety-five percent of one poll's respondents said 
that they had a better-than-average sense of humor.)  It is not 
bad to err.  It is, however, dangerous to be sure you are right 
when you are wrong.  Where people go wrong is in putting too much 
confidence in their judgments, I judge (!).  Perhaps we would go 
crazy with anxiety if we were not over-confident about our 
thinking abilities and our knowledge.  But if each of us can do a 
bit better than otherwise, we will improve our own spans of life 
as well as the lives of others now and to come. 




                    WHAT'S NEW IN THIS BOOK?
     Readers often want to know what is new in a book.  Most of 
the individual ideas in this book can be found in earlier 
writers, sometimes in writings thousands of years old.  However, 
a few of the ideas -- for example, the use of the resampling 
method to handle all problems in statistics and probability, and 
the application of the discounting mechanism to characterize 
interpersonal relationships as well in allocating one's resources 
in various periods -- are largely my own discoveries; these 
innovations are flagged in footnotes.  More important than 
particular new chunks of thinking, however, is the transfer of 
ideas from one area of thought to another -- for example, the 
application of the ancient logical fallacies to improve our 
understanding of our feelings, and of economic cost-benefit 
analysis to science and psychotherapy.  By so doing the book 
attempts to broaden our judgments. 
     We all tend to think that our own situation is different 
than others', and therefore advice derived from other's 
situations is inapplicable.  Tell a student studying for the bar 
exam that a good night's sleep before the exam probably is of 
more value than last-minute cramming, and she may tell you that 
you have never taken a bar exam; no matter if you have a lifetime 
of experience with the examination process in other fields.  Tell 
an airline executive that a volunteer system could handle 
oversales better than the existing arbitrary policy, and the 
executive will say "You don't understand the problems of our 
industry".  But ideas that work in one context often can be 
profitably imported to other contexts.  This import-export 
process is the main novelty in this book.  I hope that the reader 
will become more open to ideas from afar, and more responsive to 
advice from "foreigners" to his/her own situation.  
     This introduction is already too long, so I'll quit here.  
And I promise you that most of the chapters will be shorter. 

THE BOOK IN A NUTSHELL                            
	The single most important idea in this book:  When in doubt 
about whether some scheme will work, or whether you will like 
something, or whether someone will be intererested in your offer, 
or whether your new product will sell, or whether almost 
anything...Try it.  Experiment.  Don't just turn the matter 
around in your mind.  Simulate the situation with a small model.  
Take a small bite.  Call the person whose interest you wonder 
about.  Put some paint on and see whether it matches.  Take some 
of your new product into a local store, hang up a sign, and see 
if anyone buys...Yes, theorize - but don't just theorize.  
Theorize, and then try it out.  
	Good luck.
REFERENCE

Welty, Eudora, One Writer's Beginnings, p. 108.


                            FOOTNOTES


     1Books with "think" or "thinking" in their titles, or which 
take thinking as their subject, usually are about one of the 
following: ways to solve puzzles (e.g. Polya; Ackoff), creative 
thought (Flesch; Wallas, etc.), or how to avoid logical muddle 
and fallacy (e.g. Stebbing).  But none of these tasks are 
important in the everyday activity of professional decision-
makers, or people generally, or anyone except specialized 
thinkers such as artists, and engineers.  This book addresses 
itself to a broad range of thinking activities, and emphasizes 
use in everyday life. 
     2"Bounded Rationality, Ambiguity and the Engineering of 
Choice," in Bell et. al, 1988, p. 33.
     3See Nisbett and Ross, 1980, for more discussion of the possibilities and limits with respect to improving our cogni
tive thinking.

taken from and still on introdu% at end

the idea of "spontaneously evolved cooperation" discovered by Bernard Mandeville, David Hume, and Adam Smith, which helps us 
understand society and economy and which in turn supplied to Darwin (by way of Malthus) the key element in Darwin's great 
biological theory.  Lack of understanding of this idea causes Soviet leaders to be puzzled, according to Arkady Shevchenko (who 
was the top Soviet diplomat at the United Nations until he left the U. S. S. R. system and came to the U. S.) "how a complex and 
little-regulated society [such as the U. S.] can maintain such a high level of production, efficiency, and technological 
innovation.  Many are inclined toward the fantastic notion that there must be a secret control center somewhere in the United 
States."   Lack of understanding of the "hidden hand" accounts for Michael Gorbachev holding the disastrously-erroneous view that 
the Soviet Union can and should be run "just like GM", in his words. 
page # thinking introdu% 11-30-49