Here’s one of my takeaways from Manson’s award-winning book.

In the book, Manson talks about a test where people are put in a room with a bunch of switches and buttons. They are told that if they do something correctly, a light comes on.

People come up with incredibly creative and unique combinations to make the light come on.

Here’s the catch – the light comes on at completely random intervals. 

People exit the experiment with passionate conviction that they “solved” the sequence(s) that make the light come on.

Manson argues that our brains are constantly in search of meaning. Combine this with the prevalence of misinterpreting and misremembering, and people quickly develop conviction and passion around something which they have no understanding of. 

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The more complicated, unknown, or difficult to explain a result is – the more we will falsely attribute our actions in order to explain it.

We don’t like not knowing, and deceiving ourselves is more comforting than attributing an outcome to randomness.