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New York Times Bestselling author Amanda Montell visits Google to discuss her book \u201cThe Age of Magical Overthinking: Notes on Modern Irrationality.\u201d

\u201cMagical thinking\u201d can be broadly defined as the belief that one\u2019s internal thoughts can affect unrelated events in the external world - think of the conviction that one can manifest their way out of poverty, stave off cancer with positive vibes, or thwart the apocalypse by learning to can their own peaches. In all its forms, magical thinking works in service of restoring agency amid chaos, but Montell argues that in the modern information age, our brain\u2019s coping mechanisms have been overloaded, and our irrationality turned up to eleven.

Montell\u2019s book delves into a cornucopia of the cognitive biases that run rampant in our brains, from how the \u201chalo effect\u201d cultivates the worship or hatred of larger-than-life celebrities, to how the \u201csunk cost fallacy\u201d can keep us in detrimental relationships long after we\u2019ve realized they\u2019re not serving us. As she illuminates these concepts with her signature brilliance and wit, Montell\u2019s prevailing message is one of hope, empathy, and ultimately forgiveness for our anxiety-addled human selves. If you have all but lost faith in our ability to reason, Montell aims to make some sense of the senseless.

Visit http://youtube.com/TalksAtGoogle/ to watch the video.
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