Optimistic and creatively inspired assessments that occasionally overreach.
A psychiatrist and CNN regular examines commonly held notions of mental-health disorders and their potentials for “normalcy.”
Frustrated with today’s “overdiagnosed, overmedicated, and undertreated society,” Archer attempts to destigmatize eight common psychological ailments by quantifying the dominance level of their inherent traits. In uniquely defusing disorders ranging from ADHD and OCD to anxiety and schizophrenia, the author believes the mental-health industry has been somewhat “glamorized.” Throughout his chatty, anecdotal book, Archer convincingly argues that we can actually function normally with mildly influential characteristics of narcissism, social anxiety and bipolar disorder. When these traits are within the lower (harmless) end of the continuum and don’t become a “superdominant” mannerism, they can be seen as beneficial behavioral enhancements—e.g., high energy and enthusiasm doesn’t always mean a bipolar personality; sensitivity and deliberation shouldn’t equal social anxiety disorder. Archer’s creative redressing of these pathologically considered conditions is compelling and will definitely capture the attention of readers eager to “re-diagnose” themselves using his spectrum scale. The author, who admits to being a hyper-intuitive “world-class poker player,” does gamble a bit, however, with the free association of some of the more volatile psychological conditions in considering their lighter traits as derivatives of normalcy. Drawing heavily on his own experiences, Archer proudly advances his beliefs with episodes from his psychiatric practice, website queries and travels throughout the country. There are some fresh, modern and mildly amusing associations here; however, contrasting self-assessed symptoms of a disorder as significant as schizophrenia with the idiom of “magical thinking” will surely raise eyebrows.
Optimistic and creatively inspired assessments that occasionally overreach.Pub Date: March 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-307-88746-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown Archetype
Review Posted Online: Jan. 15, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2012
Though full of pauses, second glances, and head-scratches, this is a very welcome primer in logical thinking.
Logic helps people build bridges to understanding. But what if people don’t want those bridges? Aha, says this entertaining guide: There’s a meta-problem for you….
In our current landscape of the postfactual, the loudest bellower is king. Enter Cheng (Beyond Infinity: An Expedition to the Outer Limits of Mathematics, 2017, etc.), the scientist in residence at the Art Institute of Chicago—now there’s a good idea—and possessor of a formidable, mathematically inclined mind. Though the author aims to teach math, science, and formal logic as she progresses, she really means to help readers construct better arguments, which may turn out to be a world-saving proposition. There is a built-in advantage to using logic, she writes, in that it provides a framework for discovering what is true, and “one of the main reasons to have a clear framework for accessing truth is to be able to agree about things.” The notion of agreement will come into play late in the book, when Cheng analyzes the best kinds of arguments, which allow us to understand another person’s point of view. Until that point, there are theorems, axioms, and proofs to go through, for mathematically based logic hinges on such things as the union of sets (the place where two circles meet in a Venn diagram) and the proper application of analogy to any particular problem. The author isn’t exactly playful, but she pitches a few paradoxes as she moves along—one of them being the fact that, since logic doesn’t actually correspond to what we know as the real world, we have to “forget the pesky details that prevent things from behaving logically.” In other words, we have to think abstractly, which poses plenty of other challenges.
Though full of pauses, second glances, and head-scratches, this is a very welcome primer in logical thinking.Pub Date: Sept. 11, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5416-7248-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: June 26, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Artificial intelligence expert Hofstadter (Gîdel, Escher, Bach, not reviewed, etc.) challenges conventional computer simulations of reasoning. These simulations don't begin to match the richness and flexibility of human thought, Hofstadter says: They're either ``brute force'' performances that simply take advantage of the computer's speed in considering already established options or programs that provide limited information that leads to a foregone conclusion. As an alternative, Hofstadter and his students create computer programs that model anagrams and analogies (remember those SAT questions: ``A is to B as C is to ...''?) as examples of human thinking and creativity. They create programs that allow the computer to search and discover candidates for the missing terms chosen from a ``coderack'' (Hofstadter loves puns). They also allow for ``slippage''—deviation from strict rules, which is what Hofstadter means by ``fluid concepts'' (for example, what is the solution to ``ABC is to XYZ as ABD is to ...?). Reading Hofstadter gives clues to how people—and presumably his computer programs- -slip around these barriers to come up with answers that are described variously as ``happy,'' ``low temperature,'' or ``urged'' with certain ``pressures.'' Hofstadter's admittedly complex writing style also has a wonderful colloquialism: You can hear him talking to his students, in part to get his own thoughts straight in the process. Reading this compendium of articles on games he and his AI researchers have programmed leads to consideration of human thought processes. In contrast to the programs of others in the field, Hofstadter's games are modest, played within small ``domains.'' But they open up ideas on how perception and concept formation are linked in parallel processing tracks in the brain. For Hofstadter, the art of programming a computer is not an end in itself but a means to further understanding the mind at work. An excellent and updated review of a major trailblazer's spin on AI. (Library of Science dual main selection)
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1995
ISBN: 0-465-05154-5
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1994
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