Mind blowing

It feels like everything you have learnt could be turned upside down in a flash and it still makes sense.

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1 person found this helpful

Fascinating, really, and gives a good basis

Pinker has written a lot of books, all very readable, and this helps to understand yourself and no estaban tricked by advertising and propaganda n

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How The Mind Works

Very thought provking, full of facts and interesting new ideas, bur a little boring if read all in one go. A good book to take in small bites.

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4 people found this helpful

Brilliant!

Very convincing and fascinating introduction of computational theory of mind and evolutionary psychology
Content has withstood time surprisingly well, 25 years after publication, despite the rapid advances in the field.

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A labour of love

This is a tough listen to be honest. it's full of lots of great insights and ideas, but it's overly long and verbose at times. It would also help if you're already quite well versed in the study of the mind because (as I found out) it's not one for the layman

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Insightful book

Well narrated and educational. Makes you realise how we have been programmed by nature and socialised by culture. I enjoyed listening and would recommend to anyone interested in sociology & anthropology or just with a curious mind.

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Changes the way you think

This book, as with all of Stephen Pinker's stuff, long and occasionally difficult. However, finishing it is exceptionally fulfilling and I never once considered giving up. The insights presented into the reason that we think the way we do will change the way that you think about everything, and they provide answers to questions which you might have thought of as unanswerable. I would thoroughly recommend this book.

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Superb American psychology.

A full look into the human psyche, a really interesting read (listen).quite a fast paced book.

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How the World Works

I read this when it came out - 1997 - and was stunned then. Re-listening now, I find some of the references (e.g. to computers) have dated a bit, but my main reaction is how the contents of this book have been more or less assimilated as the basis of our modern understanding of the world. Evolutionary biology is such a satisfying logical basis for exploring human strategies and capacities - of cooperation, competition, status-seeking, mating, making war, art, physically seeing - that once you have it carefully explained by someone like Steven Pinker, you don't forget it (like I forget history books) and nothing else (e.g. cultural feminism) competes as a coherent explanation. I did get more out of a second reading, but the most surprising thing was how much had stuck, and become the wallpaper of 'my' mind.

Warning - rather slow start with extensive technical details on visual perception. Some readers might get put off by that and not persevere to the more 'social' issues, which get more interesting as the book progresses.

Narration. Mel Foster is clearly a professional actor/reader, and delivers a perfect performance, in a voice completely appropriate to SP as a Harvard professor.

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22 people found this helpful

Excellent! Reverse engineering for the mind.

With Stephen Pinker, you always get a lot of book for your bucks! This one is no exception.

I expected a book about CBT and neuroanatomy. However, I found the first sections of this book unusual - a detailed reverse engineering of our misperceptions to uncover the tricks the brain uses in giving us meaningful information about the world in the form of 3D colour vision, stereo hearing, tactile sensations, heat, cold, pain etc. It is almost a book of AI about how you might go about building a brain from scratch.

Yes, I liked his advocacy of the "computational theory of mind" - combined with the "selfish" gene centred model of evolution. This has rich explanatory power, and he is at pains to show how it differs from the prevalent "academic" view of the SSSM (Standard Social Sciences Model), based on the mind as a blank slate.

My only gripe with him here is that many of his evolutionary examples were a bit cliched - I wish he had tackled some of the more problematic areas of the theory such as the adaptive value of homosexuality, suicide, empathy etc. To be fair, he did do a whole section on altruism.

Perhaps the best bits for me were his detailed analyses of humour and music, not as adaptations, but as biproducts of other adaptive modules like language and status - ways we found to tweak our brain physiology in pleasurable directions, and which we thus developed. He also looks at free will, religion, "the hard problem" of consciousness, and every aspect of what it is to be human.

If you like Pinker's down to earth scientific approach, as I do, this book gives a very interesting perspective on the sometimes odd way our minds work, to envisage the world. Some parts are very detailed, and your interest may sag at times, but the pace and interest soon pick up.

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15 people found this helpful