A witty, enjoyable book with plenty of food for thought.
Thinking about our own thinking is difficult, but this book offers useful advice in an entertaining package.
In his latest book, Myers, a respected figure in the field of psychology, aims to link academic findings with the everyday lives of ordinary people via essays grouped into themes of the self, relationships, and interactions with society. He readily admits that even after 50 years of study, he is still impressed, and often perplexed, by the human mind. Nevertheless, research can provide useful perspectives, helping us to look below the surface of our thinking. We all have a tendency to overestimate our abilities, even when the objective evidence is against us, and we have a strong need to be part of a group of people like ourselves. This can set up a dangerous pattern of polarization, especially in the digital era. “When like minds discuss, their attitudes often become more extreme,” writes the author. “Like hot coals, like minds strengthen one another.” The author cites data showing that many Americans, especially, don’t interact with those who hold different political views—and don’t want to. The urge to be part of an in-group is balanced by our need to be different at a personal level. Other people think about us much less than we might believe, which can be liberating. “A bad hair day hardly matters,” Myers writes. “And if we wear yesterday’s clothes again today, few will notice. Fewer will care. Of those, fewer still will remember.” The author has some fun looking at the phenomenon of being “phubbed”—i.e., “phone snubbed,” when someone stops talking to you to check their phone. Though Myers is unquestionably an authority, he sometimes trades depth for breadth; some essays are just getting interesting when he moves on to another topic. The author does include a comprehensive reference section for those who want to further investigate a particular area.
A witty, enjoyable book with plenty of food for thought.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-374-60195-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.
A warts-and-all portrait of the famed techno-entrepreneur—and the warts are nearly beyond counting.
To call Elon Musk (b. 1971) “mercurial” is to undervalue the term; to call him a genius is incorrect. Instead, Musk has a gift for leveraging the genius of others in order to make things work. When they don’t, writes eminent biographer Isaacson, it’s because the notoriously headstrong Musk is so sure of himself that he charges ahead against the advice of others: “He does not like to share power.” In this sharp-edged biography, the author likens Musk to an earlier biographical subject, Steve Jobs. Given Musk’s recent political turn, born of the me-first libertarianism of the very rich, however, Henry Ford also comes to mind. What emerges clearly is that Musk, who may or may not have Asperger’s syndrome (“Empathy did not come naturally”), has nurtured several obsessions for years, apart from a passion for the letter X as both a brand and personal name. He firmly believes that “all requirements should be treated as recommendations”; that it is his destiny to make humankind a multi-planetary civilization through innovations in space travel; that government is generally an impediment and that “the thought police are gaining power”; and that “a maniacal sense of urgency” should guide his businesses. That need for speed has led to undeniable successes in beating schedules and competitors, but it has also wrought disaster: One of the most telling anecdotes in the book concerns Musk’s “demon mode” order to relocate thousands of Twitter servers from Sacramento to Portland at breakneck speed, which trashed big parts of the system for months. To judge by Isaacson’s account, that may have been by design, for Musk’s idea of creative destruction seems to mean mostly chaos.
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2023
ISBN: 9781982181284
Page Count: 688
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
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BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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