A surprisingly poignant, intellectually rigorous study of how our thought processes shape our lives.
A thoroughly researched, pop-culture–laden exploration of how people make choices.
Gates posits that the human mind can essentially be divided into two “systems,” the subconscious (System 1) and the conscious (System 2). Although the commonly accepted thinking is that our conscious, rational minds make better, more informed decisions, Gates argues that the spontaneous, often emotional reactions of the subconscious influence us far more than we’d like to admit. People who deny this reality and rely purely on System 2, the author says, won’t benefit as much as those who recognize and make use of their System 1 impulses. This intriguing book drives home the notion that “the Truth” isn’t a solidly defined fact but rather a perpetually shifting, ambiguous process. It’s led people to search for meaning and patterns that often aren’t there, Gates says; they fool themselves into thinking that they “know” what the best choice is, when in fact, they have no solid idea. The author notes German psychologist Gerd Gigerenzer’s notion that “[t]he art...is to ignore the right kind of information.” To further illustrate its concepts, the book uses a variety of examples, examining the art of storytelling, statistics games, and quotes from leaders who engaged in ill-fated wars and political endeavors. It also makes artful use of pop-cultural references (such as a Dilbert cartoon) to elegantly encapsulate its complex subject matter. Gates opens the book with an anecdote about the various mistakes in judgment that led to the 1986 Challenger space-shuttle explosion, which serves as a visceral framing device to examine choices that NASA made that were based on faulty thinking. In this example, the author reveals that sometimes people make decisions based on the fact that an event has not transpired, and they therefore irrationally believe that it will never occur. As Gates states numerous times, this absence of evidence is not an evidence of absence, and yet people still perceive information based largely on what they wish it to mean.
A surprisingly poignant, intellectually rigorous study of how our thought processes shape our lives.Pub Date: April 30, 2014
ISBN: 978-1499004106
Page Count: 264
Publisher: Xlibris
Review Posted Online: Nov. 20, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should...
Greene (The 33 Strategies of War, 2007, etc.) believes that genius can be learned if we pay attention and reject social conformity.
The author suggests that our emergence as a species with stereoscopic, frontal vision and sophisticated hand-eye coordination gave us an advantage over earlier humans and primates because it allowed us to contemplate a situation and ponder alternatives for action. This, along with the advantages conferred by mirror neurons, which allow us to intuit what others may be thinking, contributed to our ability to learn, pass on inventions to future generations and improve our problem-solving ability. Throughout most of human history, we were hunter-gatherers, and our brains are engineered accordingly. The author has a jaundiced view of our modern technological society, which, he writes, encourages quick, rash judgments. We fail to spend the time needed to develop thorough mastery of a subject. Greene writes that every human is “born unique,” with specific potential that we can develop if we listen to our inner voice. He offers many interesting but tendentious examples to illustrate his theory, including Einstein, Darwin, Mozart and Temple Grandin. In the case of Darwin, Greene ignores the formative intellectual influences that shaped his thought, including the discovery of geological evolution with which he was familiar before his famous voyage. The author uses Grandin's struggle to overcome autistic social handicaps as a model for the necessity for everyone to create a deceptive social mask.
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should beware of the author's quirky, sometimes misleading brush-stroke characterizations.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-670-02496-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
