We've outsourced too much of our thinking. How do we get it back? Have you ever followed your GPS device to a deserted parking lot? Or unquestioningly followed the advice of an expert&#8212perhaps a doctor or financial adviser&#8212only to learn later that your own thoughts and doubts were correct? And what about the stories we've all heard over the years about sick patients&#8212whether infected with Ebola or COVID-19&#8212who were sent home or allowed to travel because busy staff people were following a protocol to the letter rather than using common sense? Why and how do these kinds of things happen? As Harvard lecturer and global trend watcher Vikram Mansharamani shows in this eye-opening and perspective-shifting book, our complex, data-flooded world has made us ever more reliant on experts, protocols, and technology. Too often, we've stopped thinking for ourselves. With stark and compelling examples drawn from business, sports, and everyday life, Mansharamani illustrates how in a very real sense we have outsourced our thinking to a troubling degree, relinquishing our autonomy. Of course, experts, protocols, and computer-based systems are essential to helping us make informed decisions. What we need is a new approach for integrating these information sources more effectively, harnessing the value they provide without undermining our ability to think for ourselves. The author provides principles and techniques for doing just that, empowering readers with a more critical and nuanced approach to making decisions. Think for Yourself is an indispensable guide for those looking to restore self-reliant thinking in a data-driven and technology-dependent yet overwhelmingly uncertain world.

The new, fully-updated edition of the respected guide to understanding financial extremes, evaluating investment opportunities, and identifying future bubbles Now in its second edition, Boombustology is an authoritative, up-to-date guide on the history of booms, busts, and financial cycles. Engaging and accessible, this popular book helps investors, policymakers, and analysts navigate the radical uncertainty that plagues today's uncertain investing and economic environment. Author Vikram Mansharamani, an experienced global equity investor and prominent Harvard University lecturer, presents his multi-disciplinary framework for identifying financial bubbles before they burst. Moving beyond the typical view of booms and busts as primarily economic occurrences, this innovative book offers a multidisciplinary approach that utilizes microeconomic, macroeconomic, psychological, political, and biological lenses to spot unsustainable dynamics. It gives the reader insights into the dynamics that cause soaring financial markets to crash. Cases studies range from the 17th Century Dutch tulip mania to the more recent US housing collapse. The numerous cross-currents driving today's markets--trade wars, inverted yield curves, currency wars, economic slowdowns, dangerous debt dynamics, populism, nationalism, as well as the general uncertainties in the global economy--demand that investors, policymakers, and analysts be on the lookout for a forthcoming recession, market correction, or worse. An essential resource for anyone interested in financial markets, the second edition of Boombustology: Adopts multiple lenses to understand the dynamics of booms, busts, bubbles, manias, crashes Utilizes the common characteristics of past bubbles to assist in identifying future financial extremes Presents a set of practical indicators that point to a financial bubble, enabling readers to gauge the likelihood of an unsustainable boom Offers two new chapters that analyze the long-term prospects for Indian markets and the distortions being caused by the passive investing boom Includes a new foreword by James Grant, legendary editor of Grant's Interest Rate Observer A comprehensive exploration of how bubbles form and why they burst, Boombustology, 2nd Edition is packed with a wealth of new and updated information for individual and institutional investors, academics, students, policymakers, risk-managers, and corporate managers alike.