Book: You Are Not So Smart: Why You Have Too Many Friends on Facebook, Why Your Memory Is Mostly Fiction, and 46 Other Ways You're Deluding Yourself
Quotes of Book: You Are Not So Smart: Why You
When a movie begins with the words "Based on a True Story," what crosses your mind? Do you assume every line of dialogue, every bit of clothing and song in the background is the same as it was in the true event on which the film was based? Of course you don't. You know movies like Pearl Harbor or Erin Brockovich take artistic license with facts, shaping them so a coherent story will unfold with a beginning, middle, and end. Even biopics about the lives of musicians or politicians who are still alive are rarely the absolute truth. Some things are left out, or some people are fused into single characters. The details, you think when watching, are less important than the big picture, the general idea. If only you were so savvy when it came to looking back on the biopic in your head, but you are not so smart. You see, the movie up there is just as dramatized, and scientists have known this for quite a while. It all starts with your brain's desire to fill in the gaps. Take book-quoteOnce people started coming up with ways to maintain larger groups, like armies, cities, and nations, humans started subdividing those groups. Dunbar's number explains why big groups are made of smaller, more manageable groups like companies, platoons, and squads-or branches, divisions, departments, and committees. No human institution can efficiently function above 150 members without hierarchies, ranks, roles, and divisions. book-quote