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Anyone considering purchasing or reading this book should read this New Yorker article about Dan Ariely's thoroughly documented habit of lying first: www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/10/09/they-studied-dishonesty-was-their-work-a-lie.

This author has been repeatedly shown to have manipulated and outright fabricated data for his papers, including for more than one study about lying.

While he starts this book with a sympathetic account of his experience being made a figure in right-wing, Covid-19 related conspiracy theories, and indeed there are many lies about him to be found around the internet, it remains the case that he has accumulated a record of real, credible, very hard to refute accusations of lying about important things, without regard for the impact of these lies on the public, on politics, on innocent graduate students, or on the scientific endeavor as a whole.

Furthermore, the book does not appear to cover any new ground as far as this topic goes. It's an important topic, but it's been covered extensively by far more credible authors.

This book also takes a firmly neoliberal perspective on the topic, placing the blame on individuals rather than on systems, and making much of how "both sides" of the political spectrum succumb to misbelief. He goes on about how terrible it is that people have "lost trust" in institutions, as if that loss of trust is the root problem, and without acknowledging that these institutions often are untrustworthy or the many and varied ways they have failed and continue to fail people. And while it's true that there are conspiracy theories on the left - anti-vaxxers and so on - Ariely claims the distribution is equal across the political spectrum. He includes a graph very early on in which he shows a cherry-picked array of conspiracy theories, with unclearly labeled axis, supposed to show which conspiracy theories are more strongly held by which side of the left-right political spectrum binary, and including such items as "effort to stop the post office from processing mail-in ballots", "Russia manipulates U.S. politics" and "the GOP steals elections" on the left side. One can argue the terminology, but I think calling these "misbeliefs", aka the word Dan Ariely says he is using just because he wanted to avoid the stigma of "conspiracy theories", is stretching it at best, and he lumps them in with much wilder ideas (e.g. the world is lead by a cabal of evil pedophiles, and so on) as if they are equivalent so that he can show his perfectly balanced "both sides do this equally actually" graph. Ariely even deploys an anecdote about Russia (drumroll..). attempting to manipulate U.S. politics shortly after showing this graph.

The fact that he begins the book by coining a snappy buzzword - misbelief - is rather a red flag when it comes to these sorts of books, too. As is the fact that much of the book is a collection of anecdotes. It's the same-old, same-old playbook of these pop-sci "this one weird trick will fix everything while conveniently never inconveniencing those currently in power" behavioral economics guru books, this time from someone who has repeatedly, literally made up data for his papers. You can't trust any anecdote or data point or study account in this book.

And to be honest, in light of his currently being embroiled in scandal about his habitually producing disinformation in the form of manipulated or outright invented study results, his writing a book about conspiracy theories, beginning with a long intro (whose title claims even those who don't usually read intros should read it) bemoaning the lies people tell about him, kinda just feels like a setup to frame his credible accusers as "misbelievers" too. Or at best, perhaps writing this book is just a continuation of his apparent fascination with lying that presumably stems from the fact that he, himself, lies. See: the scientific papers about lying that he's made-up data for.

Shame on the publisher for publishing this anyway, as they absolutely knew about all this. Though it's not surprising - these sorts of popsci books are never fact checked by publishers.

It's not worth your time.

This cis/heteronormative rich white neoliberal morality crisis hellscape of a book was decidedly not meant for me and I don't know why I bothered to finish it.

It does have its moments, but. It's trying so hard to be self-aware and meaningful, and falling so short of it. It's so blatant that for a while I thought it was doing it on purpose, but no. And it just meanders and wallows, plot-wise.

And the main character is an insufferable rich "philanthropist" who can do no wrong and is repeatedly wronged by people who want his money.

He and the other characters barely have personalities at all.

The women, especially, feel peripheral. Even though the book is written by a woman, everything is about the men - even the parts about the MC volunteering at a women's shelter are about the men - and the men are more developed as characters. But this kind of fits in with everything else about the book.

I think I hate it, and I will probably soon forget it. At least, that's my hot take, having just finished it.

This cis/heteronormative rich white neoliberal morality crisis hellscape of a book was decidedly not meant for me and I don't know why I bothered to finish it.

It does have its moments, but. It's trying so hard to be self-aware and meaningful, and falling so short of it. It's so blatant that for a while I thought it was doing it on purpose, but no. And it just meanders and wallows, plot-wise.

And the main character is an insufferable rich "philanthropist" who can do no wrong and is repeatedly wronged by people who want his money.

He and the other characters barely have personalities at all.

The women, especially, feel peripheral. Even though the book is written by a woman, everything is about the men - even the parts about the MC volunteering at a women's shelter are about the men - and the men are more developed as characters. But this kind of fits in with everything else about the book.

I think I hate it, and I will probably soon forget it. At least, that's my hot take, having just finished it.

This first volume is lighthearted and fun, and funnier than I expected. One particular joke made me laugh out loud even though I was alone.

The portrayal of the one (1) female character among the party of otherwise all men was frustrating; as the only woman, she is therefore the character who is melodramatically disgusted by eating monsters, who is insecure, who is always flagging behind the men and compelling the party to stop for a rest, etc. It's not great.

There is some hope that this might improve in future volumes, maybe, and at least her squeamishness also functions to make her the "relatable everyhuman" character for the reader, whose reactions are likely to be more like hers than like the other characters'.

In a vacuum, I do like her well enough. If the book had more than one female character, and said female characters had as much variety among them as the men, she could potentially be fine as a character. But she's the only one, and her portrayal is so different to the mens' in such a blatantly and stereotypically gendered way, so she just comes off as trope-tastic token girl #3000, at least in this first volume. And this is so heavy-handedly so that it's hard to see her as an individual underneath that.

Regardless, I was able to overlook that aspect to enjoy the manga overall, and I'm intrigued and hopeful about the subsequent volumes. This one is very much episodic - fight monster! Now eat monster! Yum! - which is enjoyable in its own right, but I hear tell that the series does develope some sort of cohesive story later on.

I recommend this for anyone who thinks the premise sounds fun, and especially for cooking and D&D nerds.