Narrative Non-fiction · Hardback

Brain Traps

Norwegian title: Tankens fallgruver

Never before have we had access to so much information – but are we any the wiser? Quite the contrary, many would say, because we have never been exposed to so many lies. But this isn’t just down to fake news and social media. According to science journalist, Bjørn Vassnes, the most important reason why we are taken in lies in us. Thanks to a brain that often takes instinctive short cuts, and therefore often leads us astray, and various ”thought helpers” – thinking technology that we master too poorly (language, numbers, logic) – we lead ourselves time and time again into brain traps. And the new media reality has further increased the pitfalls, making them more difficult to identify.

Vassnes’ book is a “travel guide” through this landscape. It makes the traps easier to discover and explains the background to their existence. The book is the first to present all types of thought traps in a single overview, but does so in an easily comprehensible way – like a kind of atlas of thought. The topics are illustrated with readily recognisable episodes from everyday life and more spectacular thought traps that the media and well-known figures have fallen into. It shows how thought traps affect all of today’s most important debates – about the climate, migration, new pandemics, etc – making it difficult to understand what is happening and what we ought to do.

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