A fine book by an excellent writer, although I would've titled it "Instinctual" , as it's main premise is the dominance of the unconscious mind over the conscious one - of instinct over intellect. He makes a compelling case, but artfully dodges the obvious (to me, anyway) implications: the demise of morality and free will. Not sure I believe a lot of this, but well reasoned and well written - it makes you think, which is exactly the purpose of a book. ( )

An absolutely fascinating read ! I've often heard that we only use 10 % of our brains and that statement has always bothered me Well, as the author of this book demonstrates,time and time again,our subconscious mind is constantly at work. It drives us and influences in so many surprising and usual ways, that that statement is something that's no longer going to trouble me. A very encouraging read. Beacuse after all, the mind is a terrible thing to waste. ( )

Fascinating and well researched book about how our mind processes things we aren't even aware of. A little bit of body language, horses that can count, and optical illusions add to the fun and wonder that is the human brain. ( )

not as readable as malcolm gladwell, but a lot of the same studies are in here. Recommended for those who enjoy interesting psych studies. ( )

A really enjoyable book, basically an exploration of system 1 processes with a heavier emphasis on neuroscience and decision-making experiments. I liked this book better than Drunkard's Walk, and I learned interesting material that isn't just a rehash of the trifecta of Misbehaving, Thinking Fast and Slow, and Predictably Irrational. I'm really impressed by the breadth of experiments that Mlodinow covers, from early forays into barely perceptible weights to the latest work on branding and fMRI (the famous "solution" to the pepsi puzzle). I appreciate that his chapters have their own themes and he uses many experiments to show the different facets of the theme rather than the other way around.

Generally the book is a good blend of history (of the study of the unconscious), short but revealing descriptions about experiments, historical examples (one that remains salient in my mind is Thatcher's conscious deepening of her voice to project authority), and personal examples that are both touching and memorable (one in which he recounts how his father's eye contact with a holocaust death camp guard saved his life, and one where his father optimistically teaches his mother sewing so she could work a job his father snoozed her into). The earlier material is the most interesting and fresh to me. In particular, I was blown away by the experiments demonstrating blindsight, and how our brains fill in gaps in sound, sight and memory (suggestions can create memories for example) automatically with guesses that do not feel like guesses to our conscious mind. I was really interested in particular about unconscious body language that we demonstrate (the ratio of eye contact while talking to eye contact while listening strongly correlates positively to higher positions of the speaker in the social hierarchy) and the ability for our minds to read that language also unconsciously (perhaps a vindication of "gut" feelings). A fascinating fact I learned from the social chapters (my personal favorite) were that lonely people die younger (very applicable), in times of distress we tend to seek company, the neo-cortex to brain ratio correlates to size of social groups (for humans roughly 150) for different species, and social rejection activates the same part of the brain that experiences physical pain. The later chapters had material that I was more aware of, so I found it generally less interesting. This included the implicit bias test, misattribution of our emotions, confirmation bias, and in/out group dynamics. However, there were some really fascinating in/out group experiments showing that it was really easy to create in/out groups but also easy to ease the line when people are forced to work together. One experiment that blew me away experimentally demonstrated that when given the chance, people choose to maximize the difference between in and out group payoffs, even at the expense of giving an in group member more payoff.

Mlodinow demonstrates how many "classical" conceptions of the human mind are wrong. That we do not recall memories from a record, but actively reconstruct memories based off of a general gist. That we are not scientists allowing evidence to accumulate to form a conclusion but lawyers who find a conclusion first and then bend evidence to fit our stories. Or that discrimination is always a conscious choice rather than an automatic categorization mechanism of the mind. More broadly, that our decisions and judgments are affected by all types of seemingly unrelated phenomena (more likely generally to get a date if touching the other person, deeper voices in males are more attractive to women). While this has many costs, Mlodinov argues that many of these make sense evolutionarily. While we are taking many signals through our senses, our conscious mind cannot process all of them. Other characteristics of the mind have a more direct impact on our early survival such as the ability to categorize, form social groups, read body language and confidence bias (encouraging people to strive and reach for the unlikely). While I am personally pursued by this line of thought. I have two general critiques of this kind of argument. One is possibility that the classical view is a contrived construction to act as a foil. This is a classic argumentative technique that might not be based on fact. The second critique is that evolutionary psychology, while convincing narratives are essentially unfalsifiable, since the story can always be changed to explain why x characteristic contributed to the survival of the species. Regardless, a fun and enjoyable book that is broad and communicates its ideas in a clear and entertaining way. ( )