The Age of Magical Overthinking: Notes on Modern Irrationality
written by Amanda Montell
read by Amanda Montell
2024

It took me awhile to write up this review for an audiobook I finished a couple of weeks ago, which is helpful because I want to say that it stuck with me. Not constantly, but every day or every other day, I have the thought of: oh this reminds me of that section of The Age of Magical Overthinking! And that is quite impressive.

I can’t recall how I ran across this book but my library had it as a book-on-tape (ie, CDs) and I have a commute that goes faster if I’m listening to something interesting. This was definitely interesting and gave me plenty to think about. Montell has a bubbly upbeat voice and matching word choice, her book is filled with fun metaphors and sitcom-esque anecdotes, and that combination tried valiantly to keep the tone of this book cheerful as she discusses cognitive biases and how they impact people on both an individual and societal level, including some pretty grim scenarios.

Magical thinking is the idea that your thoughts alone can manifest changes in the world. Montell picked the title of this book with intention, because this isn’t a book about magical thinking, it’s a book about magical overthinking. And she does the same thing with each of these biases: acknowledge that they developed for a reason and have a reasonable place in our mental toolkit. They are not inherently wrong, but they can cause immense harm when they’re over-used or used inappropriately.

The table of contents lists the biases she covers and also gives you a sense of her conversational writing style:

• Make it make sense : an intro to magical overthinking
• Are you my mother, Taylor Swift? : a note on the halo effect
• I swear I manifested this : a note on proportionality bias
• A toxic relationship is just a cult of one : a note on the sunk cost fallacy
• The shit-talking hypothesis : a note on zero-sum bias
• What it’s like to die online : a note on survivorship bias
• Time to spiral : a note on the recency illusion
• The scammer within : a note on overconfidence bias
• Haters are my motivators : a note on the illusory truth effect
• Sorry I’m late, must be Mercury in retrograde : a note on confirmation bias
• Nostalgia porn : a note on declinism
• The life changing magic of becoming a mediocre crafter : a note on the IKEA effect.

Most of these I’ve long been aware, and none of them came as a shock, but some of them I hadn’t given much thought to before this book. And they’re all worth thinking about. This book does an excellent job of introducing the biases to the reader for further contemplation.

In cases where I had already spent a lot of time thinking about them, Montell’s discussion was still an introductory overview that didn’t cover some of the more complex aspects, which is fair given the kind of book it is. But for the biases where I hadn’t been thinking about them, this was a good jumping off point, to start the process of thinking about how I’m thinking.