Alchemy: The Surprising Power of Ideas That Don't Make Sense

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Sutherland beautifully follows Schopenhauer's maxim to "use common words to say uncommon things, rather than the opposite". He notes correctly that one person choosing a group will instinctively use a broader variance than one person hiring one person.

Page 37, section heading "THE FOUR S-ES", Sutherland says immediately underneath "There are five main reasons why we . One candidate answered he would take the coin, dip it in Marilyn Monroe's bag and then say, "I'll sell you a genuine 25-cent coin as owned by Marilyn Monroe. Its difficult to reply with “tap water” when you are being asked by waiter “Still or Sparking water?Irrational people are much more powerful than rational people, because their threats are so much more convincing. One way a business can reduce their environmental footprint is to sell a product in concentrated form, which reduces packaging and distribution costs, and can also reduce the volume of chemicals used. He has also served as the president of the Institute of Practioners in Advertising (IPA) - the first ‘creative’ to do so. It’s not just from trains that Sutherland finds examples of the curious ways in which humans operate. He does talk about accidents being a part of discovery: "for all we obsess about scientific methodology, [Andre] Geim [discoverer of graphene] knows it is far more common for a mixture of luck, experimentation and instinctive guesswork to provide the decisive breakthrough; reason only comes into play afterwards.

We choose how and when to travel, influenced not only by speed and time but by habit, status, comfort, variety– and many other factors that engineering equations don’t capture at all.

The Ogilvy advertising legend—“one of the leading minds in the world of branding” (NPR)—explores the art and science of conjuring irresistible products and ideas . Economic exchanges are heavily affected by context, and attempts to shoehorn human behaviour into a one size fits all straitjacket are flawed from the outset - they are driven by our love of certainty.

It explains why we think the Parthenon has straight columns when closer inspection will reveal that it doesn’t. But, according to Sutherland, ‘in human behaviour psychological improvements are the only thing that matters, because we don’t make decisions objectively’. Too Clever For Logic apparently can't see any difference between better marketing of an effective product and selling something as medicine when we know for a fact it doesn't work. Soap was sold on its ability to increase your attractiveness more than on its hygienic powers, and while it contained many chemicals to improve hygiene, it was also scented to make it attractive - supporting the unconscious promise of the advertising rather than the rational value of the product.As an aside, this analysis leads Sutherland to think that the future of financial services may be employer-provided. His collection rivals that of Richard Thaler who outlined a list, in his book Misbehaving, of things people do that are inconsistent with the economists’ model of rational choice. People do not choose brand A over brand B because they think brand A is better, but because they are more certain it is good. They are prepared to pay a premium not only for something better, but to ensure that it is not terrible.