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The Dimensional Psychologist's Toolkit

Name: The Dimensional Psychologist's Toolkit
Author: Nathan Coppedge
ISBN: 978-1494807238

OR, THE SO-CALLED SERIOUS JOKE BOOK; THE DIMENSIONAL ENCYCLOPEDIA, SECOND VOLUME

by Nathan Coppedge ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 20, 2013

A random digest of recondite terms that may be inaccessible to most.

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Coppedge (The Dimensional Philosopher’s Toolkit, 2013) explores obscure notions of psychology in this collection of ruminations.

The author introduces his work by saying, “I am writing this book out of my obligation as a potentially eminent typologist.” This sense of hubris appears throughout his dictionarylike series of psychological principles. The stated intention is “to provide an original standpoint on conventional principles.” The challenge for the reader is in trying to understand the text. Its structure is an encyclopedic list of arcane psychological concepts—Itineralism; Nariety of Malapropism; Semblancy as Precondition—that often requires multiple readings to grasp some meaning. Some of the entries are images rather than text, but little explanation of these diagrams, via words or images, occurs. In a few select instances, fragments of text seem logical but only when taken out of context. For example, in the entry “Fear - Basis of,” the author notes “a pattern that emerges that knowledge should but does not resolve the problem of fear”; “Fetishistic Determinism” “[e]xplains why many objects have appeal when the person cannot necessarily argue for the object’s purpose, significance, or appeal.” But these intelligible entries are rare. Coppedge often further divides his listings into sections, breaking the concepts down into stages, types or categories, creating greater intricacy and confusion. For example, under the heading “Mentation,” he offers four types—Occupied, Distracted, Compelled and Open—and within those, four stages. Some unfamiliar terms are left undefined—“qua genus,” “agons,” “haptics.” It’s unclear who this book is designed for and what qualifications Coppedge possesses. He refers to himself as a philosopher. The book’s subtitle, “or, The So-Called Serious Joke Book,” remains a conundrum as well. Those with a taste for the esoteric and a love of complex psychology might enjoy this work.

A random digest of recondite terms that may be inaccessible to most.

Pub Date: March 20, 2013

ISBN: 978-1494807238

Page Count: 388

Publisher: CreateSpace

Review Posted Online: June 12, 2014

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

PSYCHOLOGY

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THE ART OF THINKING CLEARLY

by Rolf Dobelli translated by Nicky Griffin ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 14, 2013

Hiccups aside, a mostly valuable compendium of irrational thinking, with a handful of blanket corrective maneuvers.

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A waggish, cautionary compilation of pitfalls associated with systematic cognitive errors, from novelist Dobelli.

To be human is to err, routinely and with bias. We exercise deviation from logic, writes the author, as much as, and possibly more than, we display optimal reasoning. In an effort to bring awareness to this sorry state of affairs, he has gathered here—in three-page, anecdotally saturated squibs—nearly 100 examples of muddied thinking. Many will ring familiar to readers (Dobelli’s illustrations are not startlingly original, but observant)—e.g., herd instinct and groupthink, hindsight, overconfidence, the lack of an intuitive grasp of probability or statistical reality. Others, if not new, are smartly encapsulated: social loafing, the hourly rate trap, decision fatigue, carrying on with a lost cause (the sunk-cost fallacy). Most of his points stick home: the deformation of professional thinking, of which Mark Twain said, “If your only tool is a hammer, all your problems will be nails”; multitasking is the illusion of attention with potentially dire results if you are eating a sloppy sandwich while driving on a busy street. In his quest for clarity, Dobelli mostly brings shrewdness, skepticism and wariness to bear, but he can also be opaque—e.g., shaping the details of history “into a consistent story...we speak about ‘understanding,’ but these things cannot be understood in the traditional sense. We simply build the meaning into them afterward.” Well, yes. And if we are to be wary of stories, what are we to make of his many telling anecdotes when he counsels, “Anecdotes are a particularly tricky sort of cherry picking....To rebuff an anecdote is difficult because it is a mini-story, and we know how vulnerable our brains are to those”?

Hiccups aside, a mostly valuable compendium of irrational thinking, with a handful of blanket corrective maneuvers.

Pub Date: May 14, 2013

ISBN: 978-0-06-221968-8

Page Count: 304

Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: March 5, 2013

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2013

Categories:

PSYCHOLOGY

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THINKING, FAST AND SLOW

by Daniel Kahneman ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 2011

Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...

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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.