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Loading... How We Decide (2009)by Jonah Lehrer
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Books Read in 2013 (517) No current Talk conversations about this book. ![]() ![]() Not surprisingly, How We Decide has a fair amount of overlap with other popular books about the mind including some that I have read ([b:Blink|2142|Blink|Ted Dekker|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1160527104s/2142.jpg|54935], [b:The Time Paradox|2179276|The Time Paradox (Artemis Fowl, #6)|Eoin Colfer|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1348831630s/2179276.jpg|2184954], and [b:The Paradox of Choice|10639|The Paradox of Choice Why More Is Less|Barry Schwartz|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1348386990s/10639.jpg|1157840]). However, despite an overlap in subject matter and in the studies cited, I feel like this book is among the better of these types of books. In addition to presenting conclusions based on psychological studies, Lehrer uses information we have gained from studying the brain to build a description of how decision making works. The main tension when making decisions is between the emotional brain and the rational brain. Actually, that is a simplification. Both systems consist of multiple systems which may, in turn, disagree with each other. On the other side of the coin, both the emotional brain are really part of the same system and influence each other. But as a mental model, this two part view of the brain is instructive. The details are interesting, but in the hopes of keeping things concise, I will cut to the chase. The emotional brain is good at taking in a lot of information and matching it against past experience. It's good for deciding personal preferences or making decisions in areas where you have a lot of experience. The rational brain is good at dealing with new experiences but can only take in a small amount of information. It's good at creating new solutions or making decisions when there are only a small number of factors to consider (perhaps as little as a dozen total across the possibilities). When they work well, these two systems help each other, with the emotional brain internalizing when decisions in certain contexts lead to good and bad outcomes and the rational brain deciding when something new needs to be tried. When either of these systems fails completely (as happens with some types of brain trauma), people become unable to function independently Those who lose rational brain functionality become unable to make considered decisions. Those who lose emotional brain functionality become unable to make decisions at all. Lehrer states in his conclusion that the most important thing you should take from this book is that you should think about thinking. This allows you to avoid stupid errors that arise from predictable brain errors (errors such as loss aversion). It also allows you to improve the working of your brain over time. Another key thing to take from How We Decide is the idea that certainty is self defeating if you want to use your brain effectively. Certainty quiets the internal dissent that your various brain parts generate and leads to bad decisions. As Lehrer says: The only way to counteract the bias for certainty is to encourage some inner dissonance. We must force ourselves to think about the information we don't want to think about, to pay attention to the data that disturbs our entrenched beliefs. We we start censoring our minds, turning of those brain areas that contradict our assumptions, we end up ignoring relevant evidence. ... So spend some time thinking about thinking. I had low expectations for this book because I read so many already in this genre. And Jonah Lehrer touched on many of well-traveled ideas and including what I find a well-traveled and boring discussion of MRI and brain activity. But there were enough new material for me to ponder over. Like, how kids do better over time with the compliment of "You worked hard" over "You are smart" and a whole different take on the definition of a psychopath. He ties together stories of Tom Brady, an airline pilot who landed a plane without hydraulics, and a smokejumper who survived a blaze by an unorthodox strategy. It could make you think ... and learn to think better by thinking less! Or more depending on the circumstances.
My copy of How We Decide has literally dozens of dogeared pages that I've marked to return to in this reviews as examples of the kind of thing that made me go Wow! and sometimes even buttonhole nearby friends to read them passages. As an introduction to the cognitive struggle between the brain’s “executive” rational centers and its more intuitive regions, “How We Decide” succeeds with great panache, though readers of other popular books on this subject (Antonio Damasio’s “Descartes’ Error” and Daniel Goleman’s “Emotional Intelligence,” for example) will be familiar with a number of the classic experiments Lehrer describes AwardsDistinctions
Offers a fascinating look at the new science of decision-making--and how it can help us make better choices. No library descriptions found.
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![]() GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)153.83Philosophy and Psychology Psychology Cognition And Memory Decision Making And Persuasion Decision MakingLC ClassificationRatingAverage:![]()
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