Alchemy: The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business, and Life

Who will like this book* Anyone who makes any kinds of product — software products, physical products, experiences, processes, workplaces, cultures, etc* Any entrepreneur seeking to create valuable businesses* Anyone who wants to understand what is True in the world* Any Charlie Munger fans* Any Slate Star Codex fans* If people would describe you as highly rational, highly logical, etc, you’ll like this book* Anyone seeking ways to find undervalued ideas will like this book* Anyone who wants to maximize people’s subjective well-beingThe benefits you’ll get from this book* You’ll be able to see the world, and in particular people, more accurately* You’ll be able to make more valuable, more loved products (software product, advertising as a product, process as a product, etc) and experiences* It makes the valuable task of independent thinking slightly easierConclusion* This book is a critical reminder that the world isn’t what it seems to be.* It feels like a lesson, or a reminder, about what’s true in the world. A reminder that many of the beliefs you’ve been holding in your brain aren’t accurate, and therefore are leading you to misperceive the world. And it’s much easier to create value and valuable things if you accurately perceive the world!* I’ve read somewhere between 500 and 1000 non-fiction books, and Alchemy is in my top 10 all-time.After you read it* If you like this book, other books that you’ll like include: “Elephant in the Brain” by Simler/Hanson and any books by Geoffrey Miller on signaling and the hidden reasons we do things, “The Righteous Mind” by Haidt on understanding the truth behind people’s stated beliefs and reasoning, “Talking to Humans” on understanding the things we really want rather than the things we say we want, “The Secret of Our Success” on the ways things that seem irrational can be highly valuable.P.S. It’s great as an audiobook. I have the Kindle and the Audible versions and prefer the Audible version. The author reads it himself, and he has a very relaxed and conversational style reading of it. I normally like audiobooks, and this style was even easier and more enjoyable to listen to than most audiobooks, so I hope other audiobook producers copy his style!

Sutherland is a great speaker (lots of great youtube and social clips out there, too!), but the book really puts great detail to many of these really interesting, intelligent, and important brand and marketing principles into play

Essentially, this is a business book that takes the nascent scientific field of evolutionary psychology and applies it to the understanding of apparent consumer irrationality. Ironically, it illuminates the irrationality of the wholly rational approach taken by individuals and organizations to understand consumer decision-making.Unfortunately, this presents a major challenge in semantics and rhetoric.The title of the book threw me off, but after reading it, you can essentially apply the same thinking outlined in the book to any feelings you might have about its title. The author stressed that why does it matter why you might get people to do the right things, and what their motives are, when in fact it's more important how you get them to do the right thing regardless of how altruistic their internal motives really are. So the type of "alchemy" the author (who is clearly very intelligent) is referring to is not the alchemy of 500 years ago, where pseudo-scientists tried to turn anything into gold, but rather the alchemy of doing things in business that might not seem logical on the surface but get consumers (your customers!) to behave the way a business wants them to. My only concern is that the author dives too deep headfirst into his adherence to [his] alchemy. And obviously, this presents a major issue because if any business starts to embrace alchemy while at the same time throwing away the rational principles of logic, then everything will be whacked out and wicked.The author [acutely] uses evolutionary psychology to make many points and observations. And I will use it to make mine: We have become more logical in business and in life because it is advantageous to do so. Logic will guide us to understand that if the majority of people avoid X (e.g., jumping off the George Washington bridge to go for a swim) because of Y (almost certain death), then it is probably a good idea to avoid X as well because it's most likely to be your outcome. This is, of course, unconscious, but unbelievably helpful. Now it might be obvious why people extrapolate this concept to bigger, more subtle things such as consumer behavior. For example, if a company's analysis for a product had shown that 80% of people purchased the red dress over the blue dress at a store, the logical conclusion would be that customers like red dresses more. It makes sense to have such a conclusion, and any species of human that would tell you that the blue dress is much more popular will probably go extinct! What the author is trying to teach, though, is that the red dress is not more popular because of the color, but perhaps because of the fact it is more noticeable because red shines much more brightly than blue. Accounting for human psychology is not a simple equation. The main value of the book is this: at a time when people are becoming more logical—and for the better (that's why they are becoming more logical to begin with)—they might become overly logical and miss large opportunities they cannot manifest. And because of the bureaucracy of big organizations, outside-of-the-box thinking is for the most part looked down upon and can even get you fired. This presents an invaluable opportunity for smaller and less bureaucratic businesses.To put it all together: embracing the idea of alchemy (i.e., unconventional business methods and ideas) can not only prove to be important but necessary. Hopefully, though, the reader doesn't come out of reading this book and thinking that both rational logic and alchemy are mutually exclusive. Rather, I would stress that they should both play a pivotal part on the same side of the coin. It can be detrimental to present, or seem to present as the author does, these two things as being opposites. In reality, they should probably be conflated as some of the ideas of alchemy—understanding an action through the lens of evolutionary psychology—can, in fact, be argued as the logical path to take.

This book is full of thought-provoking wisdom.I like the idea that mine has to operating systems the rational logical mind and irrational created mind.The book is so similar that I will be reading it again before moving onto my next book.