Customer Reviews

I am Right You are Wrong: From This to the New Renaissance: From Rock Logic to Water Logic

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

If you're interested in learning what the brain does without having to memorize lists of neurotransmitters and sections of neo-cortex, this is the book for you. De Bono is a genius at making a complex subject completely accessible to the average reader. For example, he avoids involved anatomical terminology altogether by using the metaphor of an octopus in place of a neuron. Learning how the brain works by imagining a beach full of glowing, smelly octopuses is a more efficient mnemonic device than a dry, "scientific" treatment. The rest of the book addresses the problems we humans have in trying to deal with everything "logically" without real logical tools, and thinking that everything can be "solved" through language, analysis, and confrontation. My way of thinking was enriched by De Bono's introduction of paradox, humor, and intuition to provoke creative thinking. And he takes on more than a few of philosophy's sacred cows while he's at it. The idea of "catchment" as a model of our automatic compartmentalization of new data is alone worth the price of the book.

I found this book to be extremely useful to my understanding of human behavior. I have been reading extensive psychological literature in order to formulate a useful model to understand how humans in organizations react to proposed change. I want to use that model to help them create positive change. Most of the literature on organizational change is anecdotal support of an approach that once worked somewhere. (Exception: Chris Argyris) DeBono starts with the fundamental mechanism of how the brain works to understand the behavior people exhibit. This understanding has enabled me to formulate much more effective approaches to individual and organizaitonal change. You do have to think hard to understand deBono's underlying messages. It may be difficult if this is the first deBono book you read, or if you have not been digging for a solution to a specific problem. But, I give it a 5+!

This book stands out as one of the best explanations of how the mind works, and doesn't work, and how to make make the best use of your own. He destroys in a few paragraphs a lot of deeply entrenched misconceptions that western society has been operating under for centuries. I've seen a lot of other long and wordy attempts that fail to get half as far as De Bono has in this little book. It's densely packed with concepts, each touched on just long enough to give the reader the main points, without all the flowery self-indulgent nonsense that so many other writers of books for the lay person love to fill their pages with. De Bono gets to the point. And good points they are! Excellent book.

After reading a number of books on critical thinking, this book came along at the right time. The author shows the importance of the kind of thinking that generates new ideas. And, while these new ideas are subject to critical thinking, it takes a very different kind of thinking to create them.

I was disappointed with the relative lack of tools to use in what the author refers to as "lateral thinking." While the tools were not the subject of this book, I believe the author could have included a number of the tools he uses and teaches. (I felt as if the author chose to omit the tools just so that readers would need to buy one of his other books to get that information.)

A worthwhile read.

For the most part, this book seemed contrived and impractical. There are a few good ideas in here, but they are buried. It takes a lot of effort to sort through and pull them out. I have three main beefs with the book:

1) The author refers to himself and his works WAY too often. There is definitely more than Narcism there, I think maybe he is his own hero. But I don't find lateral thinking to be that fascinating. He satkes his reputation on this concept. "Lateral Thinking" is the same thing as "mechanized creativity."

2) There is a fundamental flaw in the book that shoots itself down. The entire book is about how we should avoid absolutes and deal with perceptions instead of concrete facts. Then it proceeds to claim that the author was "right" about this and that in previous works and it makes assumptions like that more food production is a goal to aspire to. Ultimately, this is a good "exploration" of a subject the author has not applied to himself. As such, I don't feel he should be regarded as speaking with authority.

3) It is about 200 pages too long. There are 3 redundant forwards, followed by a lengthy introduction (32 pages), followed by a redundant introductory section. On page 110, the author is still referring to things he intends to do with the book. Don't talk it up, just do it.

There are more than 70 pages building up what the book will do, and the rest of the book just fails to live up. ONE of the THREE Forwards says that the book is in simple terms because De Bono is a master and can dumb it down. Not so. It is in simple terms because it is not a complete concept and the whole book is filled with testaments to the author's lack of understanding of his own concepts.

All that said, I actually do enjoy the "lateral thinking" exercises of De Bono. I suggest spending your reading time there instead of here.

This book opened a lot of doors in my mind that I've been trying to get through for a long time.

This book is a great mix of topics that helped me gain a different understanding (several mental models are proposed in the book that offer a mental paradigm shift) of the relationship of emotion to thought to psychology, philosophy, belief, truth, etc. and helped me gain a historical and cultural understanding of the belief structures I have working in my life.

In this book, De Bono proposes that critical thinking is powerful, but less than perfect, if it is the only thinking we use. He proposes that Critical/Rational thinking as developed by Socrates/Plato has provided the means for our technological success today, but has also blocked our progress as humans because it is only one kind of thinking (black or white, right or wrong). There are other ways of thinking and when they are used in conjunction with rational thought we have a better chance at improving our human interaction and the world we live in.

I have a true, good friend who recommended this book. I had asked him for his opinion on why I feel the need to "evangelize" other people. "Why do I feel this need to convince other people that my beliefs are correct and that theirs are somehow flawed if they don't match mine exactly?" I've observed how this practice has had poor effects in my own life and also how similar practices have not had good effects in the world e.g. War, Politics, Religion, etc. On a technical level we've made all kinds of progress, yet on a social level we are still acting like cavemen!

So, anyway, this year I've been studying motivation, behavior, psychology, belief, various religions, etc. attempting to understand myself and how/why I interact with other people in the way I do even though I know my confrontational approach is less than Ideal. This book gave me some breakthrough thinking on this subject and I'm still sorting through the debris of my former beliefs on human motivation as a result. This is why I feel like I will give this book 5 stars in a few months after I've had a chance to study it more. Right now, I'm wondering if I've been logically tricked...

One thing is for sure, I didn't "get" De Bono's 6 Hats until reading this book. I bought "SIX THINKING HATS" at the same time I bought "I'M RIGHT, YOU'RE WRONG" and it seems like these two books together offer practical approaches to revolutionize our thinking patterns and improve our human interactions.

Do these ideas result in practical change and improvement for myself and world I live in? I will need to report on this later. As a intellectually stimulating book I give it 5 stars. For pragmatism, I give it 3 because I haven't tested it yet. So, for today, I give it 4 stars overall.



Note: This was not an easy book to read. It seemed like de Bono took forever to get to his points. In fact, at one point, I skipped a few chapters and then found I had to go back and make them up. His teaching seems so simple in hindsight! But de Bono is building a logical argument throughout the book and while it seems like he is taking too long to get to his points, the points are WORTH IT! This is NOT a book on practical tools. He has written other books about practical tools (of which he reminds you quite often). This book provides a foundation on which to develop practical solutions.

Perhaps I have read too many book dealing with similar topics but I found this book "underwhelming". This book lacks substance; focusing more on pseudo-academic referencing and plugs for the author's other books, workshops, and CDs. Perhaps if he were truly blazing new ground this might be acceptable. Unfortunately much of the information is "old hat" if you have read the far superior "How real is real?" by Paul Warzlawick, "Quantum Consciousness" by Stephen Wholinsky, or even the works of Robert Anton Wilson (Fiction or Non-Fiction). That said, the best part of the book, in my opinion, was his explorations and anecdotes about humor. In the end, unless you are a nut for this subject or looking for a second tier reference I would try other books. I freely admit that I have not read Edward De Bono's other works and would still consider reading them after a good browsing to make sure they do not resemble this book. Sorry Edward; nice concept but poor execution.

Edward de Bono is a pattern-interrupting Savant Provocateur!

As a preview, here's an interruption of a pattern (of expectations) for you: de Bono - throughout the book - promises to go into some detail to explain the term "hodics" (which he conceptually previews as a shift in inquiry from "is" to "to"). As you reach the last page of the book, you finally see a paragraph long C-level section in which de Bono excuses himself from his own mandate: he explains that he - "upon reflection" - decided not to "burden" the reader with too much about "hodics." End of story. The modern-day Diogenes of Synope has left the building, with the unabashed spontaneity of a Zen master that just cut a whole cat in half (just to make a point about the dangers of dichotomous thinking)!

Don't get me wrong: the book more than meets its lofty mandate (to herald a renaissance, no less!) - it's panoramic, it's thought provoking, it's original, it's "meta" in more way than one.

Reading De Bono is a kind of fun you get from watching Rubick's cubing on You Tube. There's the circularity all right. There are brilliant revelations as pseudo-chaos of pattern interruptions suddenly comes into crystal clear focus. The result is a contagious desire to try out the water logic yourself, to discover this amazing thought style that allows one to maneuvre around the unnecessary rapids of the false dichotomies and the situation-independent absolutes.

I love de Bono's pushy paradigm-shifting style. I enjoyed his "Lateral Thinking" and I really liked this work on "Water Logic." He is right. We are wrong. No "ifs, ands or buts" about it - just a neologistic pattern-interruption word-cue "po."

In sum, the "I am right you are wrong" is a must for psychologists, comedians, marketing/advertizing folks, politicians, scientists, and poets. All these seemingly unrelated vocational and avocational "factions" stand to improve the understanding of their respective perception-manipulating skills and arts.

Pavel Somov, Ph.D.

I agree with Daniel Crew of Nashville. This book has a few gem in it but it takes too much effort to dig them out. Dont get me wrong, I think highly of De Bono's thinking tools but this book failed to deliver against the expectations he never stop building up through out the entire book. AND he came across as a really insecure person because he constantly need to give himself credit for ideas he has already established as 'his' - which is irritating.

He did a pretty good job of explaining why the current system of thinking is archaic but he failed to explain in a simple and clear manner the solution that he is proposing - that is because he only made references to them - you wont find them in the book, you need to go out and buy more of his books to learn about those methodologies.

So, this book ended up sounding like a really long brochure on why you need to use his thinking tools and methodology. Save yourself the time and money. Just go out and buy Six Thinking Hats and the other books. He does a pretty good job in explaininig why the tools work and why you need them there again.

For me Edward de Bono is a fascinating thinker who does not get the attention he deserves. He puts forth many interesting ideas about how we think and how we can improve our thinking. If his ideas were adopted, I believe they would have a great positive impact on humanity. In an odd way, the non-application of his ideas confirms his theories about why old style thinking prevails and better design thinking remains the bailiwick of artists and visionaries, and out of the realm of the common man.

His basic premise is that traditional logic, analysis and judgment thinking are not good enough to move us forward to where we need to be. This thinking by its nature relies too heavily on existing frameworks and therefore does not lead to the kind of creative approaches required for breakthroughs. Instead, we make improvements at an evolutionary pace, complacent with the way things are (unless prodded otherwise by a crisis), and waiting for a creative genius to lead us forth at some future place and time.

De Bono argues that thinking is a skill that can be taught to anyone, particularly how to change perceptions. He developed the concept of lateral thinking, which works to help design new ideas by working with what he terms self-organizing patterns, as opposed to externally organized systems. This is actually, for me, the hardest concept to grasp, which is the idea of what a self-organizing system is. His main - and most important - example of this is how the brain works: it receives information which forms patterns. Future input follows these previous patterns so that we can only see what we are prepared to see. To see something different and new, or come up with a new idea, the brain needs a provocation to jolt it out of its previous patterns. This is how humor works: the punch line is unexpected, but follows back logically in hindsight.

De Bono's theories about thinking and how to improve it challenge the status quo and can be threatening to existing institutions, particularly education which, according to him, do not teach students how to think; instead schools and universities fill students with information to which they then react. They are left without the thinking skill he refers to as operacy, or the ability to come up with workable ideas. Perhaps his strongest case is in the observation that humanity has progressed significantly in technical matters, where analysis and logic are key, but barely in human relations, where more than just traditional thinking is required. He even proposed the creation of new words that will capture meanings that are not currently expressed in existing language.

There is some irony in De Bono's claims and approach, as he uses logic and criticism against logic and criticism; uses language, which he criticizes as constraining, to criticize language; provides a history of thinking while condemning the focus on history; and, in my opinion, one can claim that he applies a different philosophy to thinking while also declaring an end to philosophy. None of this is a condemnation of his work, but rather and acknowledgement that, ironically, any revolutionary thinker can only inherit for his work the very same tools he seeks to change.

I Am Right/You Are Wrong is a good explanation of his basic theories. It is worthwhile reading for anyone seeking to understand the foundation of De Bono's thought.