A thoughtful blend of social and biological science, history, economics, and sometimes contrarian politics.
A flinty look at a culture and economy based on the premise that there are points to be scored and dollars to be made by shaming people.
“Shame is a policing tool,” writes data scientist and mathematician O’Neil, “and it has been one since the first clans of humans roamed the savannas of Africa.” As a means of reinforcing taboos and social norms, shame has its uses. Yet, as O’Neil gamely writes, there’s a “shamescape” at work, “always brimming with opportunity.” If there’s a diet on the market, there’s a huckster out there to flog it, always playing on the shame of a person who believes they are heavier than what cultural and social norms consider acceptable. In one of O’Neil’s most unpleasantly pointed examples, she examines the whisper-of-shame subeconomy surrounding female genitalia and the horror that an odor might be detected. Lysol, she notes, was originally marketed in a campaign that “shamed half of humanity for the by-products of a functioning reproductive system” and was laced with chemicals that caused burns and even death. Our sexual organs, she writes, “generate profound fears and insecurities within us. Even in these more sexually liberated times we tend to envelop them in secrecy.” O’Neil takes a philosophical turn in her discussion of the acceptability of shaming, arriving at a standard whereby those who can do nothing about a condition should be shielded whereas those who might be able to adjust—incels, for one, who “are not hermetically sealed off from the rest of the world”—might understandably weather a few shame-based nudges to grow up. Whether it’s smoking in public, masking against Covid-19, or promulgating political lies, O’Neil allows room for shame while also urging readers always to “punch up” at the social and economic machine and its masters rather than down at the vulnerable.
A thoughtful blend of social and biological science, history, economics, and sometimes contrarian politics.Pub Date: March 22, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-984825-45-2
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Jan. 10, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2022
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
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.
A follow-on to the author’s garbled but popular 48 Laws of Power, promising that readers will learn how to win friends and influence people, to say nothing of outfoxing all those “toxic types” out in the world.
Greene (Mastery, 2012, etc.) begins with a big sell, averring that his book “is designed to immerse you in all aspects of human behavior and illuminate its root causes.” To gauge by this fat compendium, human behavior is mostly rotten, a presumption that fits with the author’s neo-Machiavellian program of self-validation and eventual strategic supremacy. The author works to formula: First, state a “law,” such as “confront your dark side” or “know your limits,” the latter of which seems pale compared to the Delphic oracle’s “nothing in excess.” Next, elaborate on that law with what might seem to be as plain as day: “Losing contact with reality, we make irrational decisions. That is why our success often does not last.” One imagines there might be other reasons for the evanescence of glory, but there you go. Finally, spin out a long tutelary yarn, seemingly the longer the better, to shore up the truism—in this case, the cometary rise and fall of one-time Disney CEO Michael Eisner, with the warning, “his fate could easily be yours, albeit most likely on a smaller scale,” which ranks right up there with the fortuneteller’s “I sense that someone you know has died" in orders of probability. It’s enough to inspire a new law: Beware of those who spend too much time telling you what you already know, even when it’s dressed up in fresh-sounding terms. “Continually mix the visceral with the analytic” is the language of a consultant’s report, more important-sounding than “go with your gut but use your head, too.”
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-42814-5
Page Count: 580
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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