Product Description
Are we noble in reason? Perfect, in God's image? Far from it, says New York University psychologist Gary Marcus. In this lucid and revealing book, Marcus argues that the mind is not an elegantly designed organ but rather a "kluge," a clumsy, cobbled-together contraption. He unveils a fundamentally new way of looking at the human mind -- think duct tape, not supercomputer -- that sheds light on some of the most mysterious aspects of human nature.
Taking us on a tour of the fundamental areas of human experience -- memory, belief, decision-making, language, and happiness -- Marcus reveals the myriad ways our minds fall short. He examines why people often vote against their own interests, why money can't buy happiness, why leaders often stick to bad decisions, and why a sentence like "people people left left" ties us in knots even though it's only four words long.
Marcus also offers surprisingly effective ways to outwit our inner kluge, for the betterment of ourselves and society. Throughout, he shows how only evolution -- haphazard and undirected -- could have produced the minds we humans have, while making a brilliant case for the power and usefulness of imperfection.
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 A Welcome New View, Necessarily Incomplete ( gtra1n )
This book is a welcome corrective to the growing body of work on the brain and consciousness. Books like Dennett's "Consciousness Explained" do everything but explain consciousness. Scientists have developed a deep and detailed explanation of how the brain works mechanical, of which neurons fire in what parts of the brain depending on the stimuli of different senses, but they seem to be moving further and further away from any knowledge of just what thought is, self-consciousness, why we have it.
Marcus' book doesn't answer this question, but it does nudge the path off its deterministic train wreck. The problem with the mechanical solutions is that they inevitably become anthropic, describing the brain as working perfectly the way it does, without describing why it works that way at all! The scientific, as well as they economic, view of human behavior and decisions as the results of perfectly clear and logical mechanisms is a fiction to anyone who actually looks at how people think and act. We're a mess, and a wonderful one! Marcus makes that point, that the brain that drives us is a marvelous mess, haphazard rather than designed, but somehow accomplished enough that we can look at ourselves and try and figure out how is it that we can even think, and write books. While this path to understanding consciousness is still unexplored, thanks to Marcus for offering a welcome and intuitive contrary view. A worthwhile read for anyone interested in the mind.
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Interesting enough-- I didn't buy every aspect. ( frumiousb )
Kluge is interesting enough to read. I was attracted to it because of the notion of the kludge. In IT, klumsy, lame, ugly, dumb, but good enough is part of everyday business. I have never seen it spelled "kluge" before, by the way. And I've always heard it pronounced as though it rhymes with "fudge". So unfortunately I started off choking on the unfamiliar spelling/pronunciation that Marcus uses. (This is a minor point, and Dr. Google suggests that he's got the right of it. But it did distract me, I confess.)
As far as the main point of his book-- I bought it well enough. The idea that the brain works in ways that may not be obvious if you try to consider the ideal mechanism is fair enough, and he substantiates that. Some of the self-help tips that he derives from those observations actually seem genuinely useful. (I've considered the advice not to make important decisions when occupied with other thoughts many times since I finished the book.)
I was less enchanted with his secondary point-- that these observations on how the brain works represent the evolutionary kluge in action. It seems that the primary purposes of this assertion are: 1) Provide a kind of red thread on which the book can be hung and 2) a free sideways swipe at Intelligent Design theory. While I always enjoy a good poke at ID, I don't quite buy his points. And I actually think that Marcus weakens his own book by using this device, since I found myself mentally arguing with his assessment of solution elegance.
As I said, an interesting enough book. I would not necessarily recommend someone rush out and buy it right away. It is reasonably short and clear enough to be read by the general reader. This might be just the thing for someone who would like something a little more useful than Tom Clancy to take on an airplane trip.
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 The Mind and You ( poezen )
The entire self help book industry is kind of applied psychology. The author takes an undergraduate degree in pysch, reads up on the current research, applies it to a business context or a life style context and voila- "Applied Psychology for Dummies- or The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, or how to think yourself thin or whatever. It's a formula, and it moves units, as they say in the music biz, so you can forgive NYU professor Gary Marcus if he's trying to get a piece of that sweet, sweet action.
Kluge is, ultimately, a self help book. I have a feeling that on its release it might be a hit- kind along the lines of Malcolm Gladwell's "the tipping point."
A Kluge is clumsy, cobbled together contraption that engineer's will develop in a pinch to solve a certain problem. A good example of a skilled klugian is MacGyver. This book is dedicated to the proposition that the human mind is, in fact, a kluge- and that it's cobbled together nature creates many of the behavioral problems that human beings seek to overcome in our day to day lives. Marcus's thesis is a little more sophisticated then what you typically get in a self help book- he is, in fact, in the minority when he advances the proposition that human reasoning and the human mind is less then the perfect reasoning tool.
To advance his thesis, Marcus draws from experimental psychology, linguistics and, of course, from popular culture. Each chapter deals with a discrete area of the human mind "memory", "belief", "choice", "language" and shows how the cobbled together nature of the mind- created as a result of our evolutionary history- has created behaviors that our problematic for large numbers of people in their day to day lives. In the second to last chapter, Marcus argues that mental illness- depression and schizophrenia are the result of "klugie" behaviors in separate areas reinforcing one another in negative fashion. In the last chapter, Marcus actually provides a list of 13 strategies to help overcome common mistakes that we all make in our day-to-day decision making. Amazingly enough, he does this all in 175 pages and in a breezy anecdotal fashion that- again- makes me think that Kluge has real potential for best seller status.
Kluge is being published in mid April- so keep your eyes peeled- espech if you dig the applied psychology/self help section of your local Borders/Barnes & Noble.
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 I enjoyed the Unabridged CD version ( yr_satisfaction_guaranteed )
Ideally, I'd have given this a 4.5 star rating, as a number of the studies sited in Kluge I'd heard of before [but in fairness, I read or listen to lots of psyche-science books]. Still, very worthwhile, for giving a convincing portrayal of how our... [appropriately, I can't think of the right word] often defective/unsatisfying brains are simply the way things are. It's not just me/us! It's well, the way evolution worked out.
Definitely recommended.
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Missing some relevant factors ( adude )
It was with great interest that I received a review copy of "Kluge", because I myself am halfway through writing an Environmental Psychology book about modern human society.
I was dismayed to find that the author gives 13 pieces of advice at the end of book, of how human beings can avoid our instinctual reactions and be more rational, and then doesn't follow them. He doesn't "consider alternate hypotheses" (as I will elaborate) and he doesn't "distance himself".
Many EP authors, such as Rubin, describe how our instinctual propensity to belong to groups, leads in modern society to our predilection to pick ideological groups to support. We choose between Democrats, Republicans, Conservatives, Liberals, as well as Jocks, Goths, Cheerleaders, Stoners, and more in High School, and later Evangelicals, Atheists, Newagers and on and on.
Unfortunately, almost all academicians and scientists do the same. They accept the media conventional wisdom that "evolution" and "intelligent design" are opposing sports teams. Like Marcus, they immediately fall prey to the emotional responses (that ironically, he describes in detail in this book) that "science" and "evolution" are "us" - our tribe - and must be defended. It's interesting that only a philosopher like John Paul II has ventured that evolution and intelligent design are not intrinsically incompatible.
Mr. Marcus disproves his own overall premise - that the human mind is haphazard and thus not designed - partway through the book. In Chapter Six, he mentions video games, and how they have to be balanced somewhere between too easy and too difficult. But he fails to notice how this can be applied to his premise - because he doesn't follow his own advice to "consider alternate hypotheses" and "distance himself". Somehow, he is postulating a "designer" of the human mind who is stupider than a video game designer. This is what he is clearly saying with his premise that any imperfections in the human mind indicate that it is not designed. In reality, if all human minds were perfect, then human life would be like a video game that was so easy, it became boring. That would be "Stupid Design", not intelligent design.
I'm not trying to start yet another discussion of ID (there are already too many hundred thousand page discussions on that subject), but from the cover, subtitle and conclusion of the book, it seems to be the premise of the book to "debunk" it, and it clearly fails to do so.
Furthermore, as other reviewers have mentioned, the author's grasp of Evolutionary Psychology that is evidenced in this book, is somewhat lacking. I will echo that the author seems to largely ignore the effects of Sexual Selection, and I will second the recommendation of "Red Queen" as an excellent text on that subject.
Marcus strangely also largely ignores the effect of the fact that modern civilization has only existed for 10,000 years - far too recent for any genetic adaptations - and thus we are adapted for a situation far different from modern human society. Bizarrely, he does mention this factor in a footnote in Chapter Seven where he quotes Kurt Vonnegut, and dismisses it with the odd statement "mental disorders have been around as long as humans have". Uh, how can he possibly know that ? No writings exist from before civilization, so there is no way to know either way. From an EP viewpoint, the human mind is adapted to a tribal lifestyle, and it is certainly a reasonable, even probable premise that all of the problems that Marcus describes in his book are simply a result of human society changing far more quickly than humans can genetically adapt.
Having said all that, I do give Marcus points for his interest in this important subject matter, and in his relatively readable presentation of the ideas. Our media encourage the viewpoint that some people ("experts") are highly rational and competent. To the extent that this book helps to disabuse people of this unrealistic notion, it can be of value.
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