Opening paragraphs.............

Despite evidence to the contrary, we all use our brains.  but most of us have never learned how to think effectively.  I'm not talking about IQ or other measures of intelligence, which matter in their own way, of course.  I'm talking about thinking as a learned skill.  We don't teach thinking in schools, and you can see the results of that nearly every day.  If you use social media, or you make the mistake of paying attention to to ther people's opinions in any form, you are probably seeing a lot of absurd and unproductive reasoning that I call loserthink.
     Loserthink isn't about being dumb, and it isn't about being underinformed.  Loserthink is about unproductive ways of thinking.  You can be smart and well informed while at the same time being a flagrant loserthinker.  That is not only possible; it's the normal situation.  My observation, after several decades on this planet, is that clear thinking is somewhat rare.  And there's a reason for that.  No matter how smart you are, if you don't have experience across multiple domains, you're probably not equipped with the most productive ways of thinking.

-Scott Adams,  LOSERTHINK:  How Untrained Brains Are Ruining America