Posts Tagged ‘book reviews’
Reviews of “Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain”
Following are some reviews about Incognito, The Secret Lives of the Brain by David Eagleman, Pantheon Books, New York, 2011. I highly recommend it.
This book argues the following ideas and more:
- Your conscious mind is the “tip of the iceberg” and the rest of the iceberg (your brain) is what is really running the show
- The vast majority of your brain’s processing which leads to what you do and what you think is not accessible to your conscious mind
- Your brain contains many modules that overlap and compete as rivals
- “You” are your biology, but you can’t be understood by simple reductionism
- You have little if any “free will” and what that means
- Your neurobiology is a result of a constant interplay of genes and environment
One of the more intriguing facts revealed in this book is that one part of the brain invents stories to justify what another part sees or feels. Our brains constantly look for order and reason, even when there is none, leading us to regularly reach erroneous conclusions.
Bee
…extremely well documented, exploring the limits of sensory perception, the learning that is automatic and burnt into our circuits
Jo Ryan
Incognito is a book of answers and a book of questions. We learn that 15% of women have four color receptors, not three like the rest of us. These tetra chromatic women actually see colors that others can’t. Then again because of the variations in our individual brains, reality can be subjective. When we look at something red, are we seeing the same thing? Are our perceptions of size, color, and light universally the same?
According to Eagleman our brain constructs our reality. We may think that we’ve just had a brilliant inspiration, but our subconscious had already come to the realization minutes before sharing it with our conscious mind.
Spudman
An example: “Your consciousness is like a tiny stowaway on a transatlantic steamship, taking credit for the journey without acknowledging the massive engineering underfoot” (pg 4).
Each one of us is much more than what we can ever think – it is amazing that we are aware only of a very small part of our brain. All of us strongly believe that we are in control of ourselves (at least most of the time) and so responsible for our actions. However our conscious self is more like the CEO of a large company that coordinates and supposedly directs the various divisions. The CEO may set the goals for the company, but he gets only a summary view of the situation and is seldom aware of the details. Similarly different sections of the brain work more or less independently – some through hard wired circuits that evolved over millions of years and others through culture and habits. We believe we are in charge but we are actually driven by what our brain (or more importantly different parts of our brain) perceives and tells us – surprisingly including what we see!
Sam Santhosh
Fascinating take aways?
- Implicit Egotism – Why we tend to mate with people who remind us of ourselves.
- Illusion of Truth Effect – We are more likely to believe a statement we have heard before…even when originally told the statement is false.
- Subliminal priming of beer paired with an image of a woman causes her to be seen as more attractive.
- Multiple memories are “recorded” for some of life’s events.
Kevin Hogan
