You were promised a software update. Somewhere around age twenty-five, adulthood was supposed to install itself-a clean, stable upgrade that came preloaded with wisdom, good judgment, and the ability to keep a plant alive for more than eleven days.
That update never came. Not for you. Not for the CEO of your company. Not for the president. Not for the Nobel laureate, the surgeon, or the guy on Reddit who is very, very certain about cryptocurrency.
In Adults Don't Exist, corporate instructional designer and author Ken Konet delivers a darkly funny, research-backed exploration of why the people we trust most are just guessing with better outfits. Drawing on cognitive science, historical disasters, and spectacularly bad decisions made by some of the smartest humans who ever lived, Konet dismantles the myth of the competent authority-and replaces it with a practical thinking system anyone can use.
Inside, you'll discover: - Why Einstein was a genius at physics and a disaster at everything else
- How Blockbuster laughed Netflix out of the room-and why every "adult" in the building agreed
- The night before the Challenger explosion, when engineers were excluded from the room by managers
- How social media algorithms manufacture false authority at industrial scale
- Why the smartest people are often the easiest to manipulate
- The No-Adults Operating System: a six-step framework for evaluating any claim from any person
Part Thinking, Fast and Slow. Part The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck. All Ken.
This isn't a cynical book. It's a liberation. If nobody has it figured out, then you don't have to have it figured out either. You just need better tools for navigating the uncertainty-and this book gives you exactly that.
Adults don't exist. But with the right thinking system, you won't need them to.
