Book Review: The Age of Magical Overthinking

This 2024 book by Amanda Montell is subtitled “Notes on Modern Irrationality.” I hesitated to buy a self-help book, but as someone with a professional interest in magical thinking, I took a chance. (As I discovered it’s not quite self-help anyway, but I don’t know what other genre I’d assign it to.)

I’m glad I ignored my first impression, as I enjoyed this book, and except for one serious flaw, it’s a great summary of cognitive biases and internal dialog. Briefly, I recommend it!

But since I’ve mentioned it, let’s address that flaw. Honestly, if the rest of the book wasn’t so good, I’d have stopped reading when I came to it. In the chapter about “overconfidence,” Montell is highly critical of Silicon Valley, but lacks the understanding of how technical breakthroughs are achieved. She also makes the bizarre and utterly incorrect assertion that when Jobs introduced the iPhone, it wasn’t capable of doing what he claimed (and demonstrated).

But a positive trait of the book is the interesting footnotes and endnotes that allow the reader to follow-up on the author’s citations. (Well, except for that iPhone statement, for which there is no citation because it’s bullshit.) Most books in the pop culture science-y category (I guess I do know what the genre is!) don’t bother with useful references. (See Scarcity Brain, for example.) Bravo, Montell.

All total, I made about 90 notations while reading, so what follows is just a small sample of things that stood out for me:

• Performative online personas are rewarded more than genuine artistic vision.
• Addiction and criminality are more strongly connected with celebrity worship than calcium intake with bone mass, or lead exposure with children’s IQs.
• “When the modern mind is starved of its nourishment, sometimes it tries to nurse in uncanny places where no milk can be found.”
• People look to others to figure out whom they, themselves, are. By elementary school, girls have already learned to compare themselves only to peers they consider superior. Boys, to those they believe inferior.
• Online, people who talk negatively — even if what they are posting is demonstrably false — are seen as more confident and get more engagement. Thus, they are algorithmically encouraged to carry on.
• All that’s left of the “good old days” are their highest-quality products, and thus, that’s all we’ll ever see.
• A “contronym” is a word that has two contradictory meanings. (Such as “bad.”)
• “Next time we have a question, let's hold out for as long as we humanly can before googling the answer. It’ll be erotic. Like edging before a climax. It's quite nice, I am learning, just to wonder indefinitely. To never have certain answers. To sit down, be humble, and not even dare to know.”

There are far too many other interesting tidbits for me to list here. The Age of Magical Overthinking is compelling, well-written, and very timely for the post-COVID, MAGA timeline in which we are all trapped. If you’re not sure that it’s for you, at least give the Kindle or Apple Books sample a try. I bought my copy at Writer’s Block, but naturally, you can find it at the Amazon too.