How We Decide [Audiobook, MP3 Audio, Unabridged] [Audio CD]

 

 

Create your own review

With regard to neuroscience, I am the among non-scholars who have a keen interest in what the brain and mind are and how they function, and am especially interested in how decisions are made. In recent years, I have read a variety of books that have helped me to increase my knowledge in these specific areas. They include William Calvin's How Brains Think: Evolving Intelligence, Then And Now, Gerald Edelman's Bright Air, Brilliant Fire: On The Matter Of The Mind, Guy Claxton's Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind: How Intelligence Increases When You Think Less, Howard Gardner's Five Minds for the Future, Malcolm Gladwell's Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, and most recently, Torkel Klingberg's The Overflowing Brain: Information Overload and the Limits of Working Memory. I am grateful to these and other volumes for increasing my understanding of the decision-making process while realizing that is still so much more that I need to know. Hence my interest in Jonah Lehrer's book, How We Decide.

In the Introduction after sharing an experience aboard a simulated flight landing at Tokyo Narita International Airport, Lehrer observes: "In the end, the difference between landing my plane in one piece and my dying in a fiery crash came down to a single decision made in the panicked moments after the engine fire...This book is about how we make decisions. It's about airline pilots, NFL quarterbacks, television directors, poker players, professional investors, and serial killers...[Ever since the ancient Greeks, assumptions about decision making have revolved around a single theme: humans are ration.] There's only one problem with this assumption of human rationality: It's not how the brain works...We can look inside the brain and see how humans think: the black box has been broken open. It turns out we weren't designed to be rational creatures...Whenever someone makes a decision, the brain is awash in feeling, driven by its inexplicable passions. Even when a person tries to be reasonable and restrained, these emotional impulses secretly influence judgment...Knowing how the mind [i.e. `a powerful biological machine'] works is useful knowledge, since it shows us how to get the most out of the machine. But the brain doesn't exist in a vacuum; all decisions are made in the context of the real world."

Then in the Coda, Lehrer re-visits the approach into the Tokyo airport that, we now realize, serves as the central metaphor in his book. "When the onboard computers and pilots properly interact, it's an ideal model for decision-making. The rational brain (the pilot) and the emotional brain (the cockpit computers) exist in perfect equilibrium, each system focusing on those areas in which it has a comparative advantage. The reason planes are so safe, areas in which it has a competitive advantage. The reason planes are so safe, even though both the pilot and the autopilot are fallible, is that both systems are constantly working to correct each other. Mistakes are fixed before they spiral out of control." The safe landing of U.S. Airways Flight 1549 on the Hudson River on January 15th offers a more recent example of what Lehrer calls "perfect equilibrium" between Captain Chesley ("Sully") Sullenberger and the computers aboard the Airbus A320.

There are many valuable insights within Lehrer's narrative. Here are several that caught my eye, albeit quoted out of context.

"The process of thinking requires feeling, for feelings are what let us understand all the information that we can't directly comprehend. Reason without emotion is impotent." (Page 26)

"Unless you experience the unpleasant symptoms of being wrong, your brain will never revise its models. Before your neurons can succeed, they must repeatedly fail. There are no shortcuts for this painstaking process." (Page 54)

"The ability to supervise itself, to exercise authority over its own decision-making process, is one of the most mysterious talents of the human brain. Such a mental maneuver is known as executive control, since thoughts are directed from the tip down, like a CEO issuing orders." (Page 116)

"As it happens, some of our most important decisions are about how to treat other people. The human being is a social animal, endowed with a brain that shapes social behavior. By understanding how the brain makes these decisions, we can gain insight into one of the most unique aspects of human nature: morality." (Page 166) Lehrer devotes all of Chapter 6, The Mortal Mind, to this important "aspect." For
example:

"At its core, moral decision-making is about sympathy. We abhor violence because we know violence hurts. We treat others fairly because we know what it feels like to be treated unfairly. We reject suffering because we can imagine what it's like to suffer. Our minds naturally bind us together, so we can't help but follow the advice of Luke: `And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise." (Page 180)

Actually, I highlighted dozens of other passages but this review is already longer than I originally intended so I will quote no others. Because I think so highly of this book, I wanted to allow Lehrer sufficient opportunity to share at least a few of his thoughts with those who read this review. Credit him with a brilliant achievement: Enabling his readers to make better decisions by helping them to "see" themselves as they really are by carefully examining that is inside the "black box of the human brain." Only by doing so can we "honestly assess our flaws and talents, our strengths and shortcomings. For the first time [Lehrer claims], such a vision is possible. We finally have tools that can piece the mystery of the mind, revealing the intricate machinery that shapes our behavior. Now we need to put this knowledge."

I am unqualified to comment on Jonah Lehrer's claim that what he offers enables the aforementioned "vision" for the first time. However, he has certainly increased both my awareness and my understanding of what may be in my own "black box."

After immensely enjoying Lehrer's first book, "Proust Was a Neuroscientist", I was excited and interested to read anything else he wrote. But when I finally got my hands on "How We Decide", I found it to be a huge letdown. Lehrer abandoned his articulate, in-depth yet easily digestible style from "Proust Was a Neuroscientist" in favour of a poppy, neo-science-journalist outlook in which he spends more time describing the physical appearances of various players in anecdotes than the neuroscience he is trying to illustrate. The book reads like one of the many ripoffs of Malcolm Gladwell's "Blink", in both style and content. While its greater attention to neuroscientific information gives it an edge, the shallowness of its discussions and poverty of its knowledge are still unforgivable, given that it was written by an actual scientist. I have already read "Blink", and had no desire to read it again. Please, Mr. Lehrer -- even your readers who are laymen want in-depth, scientific reading, not fluffed-up nonsense about "logic vs feelings".

I often hear a lot of comments criticizing this book's similarity to Malcolm Gladwell's "Blink". Yes, the subject matter is the same and there are 3 or 4 real-world examples that they both had in common.

But "Blink" left me rather disappointed. It was a book that was about these real-world examples and not much else. It was a fun read, like Gladwell's other books, but it amounted to little more than trivia.

Lehrer's "How We Decide" not only delves into the neuroscience behind the subject matter, but most crucially it leaves its readers with conclusions that they can apply to their own lives - something that was sorely missing in Blink. The structure of the book is solid and deliberate, with the final chapters of the book putting all the pieces together.

Was it as fun to read as "Blink"? I imagine many people would say that it's not. But the insight Lehrer provides is vastly more valuable and resolves many of the frustrations I had with Gladwell's book. Anybody with a background in science, social science, or even math will probably feel the same way. Where Gladwell made reckless assumptions and created many shady links between cause and effect, Lehrer tends to keep the examples more relevant and the logic much more airtight.

If you read books solely for entertainment, you probably don't need to read this if you've already read "Blink." But if you have even the slightest interest in expanding your knowledge and applying this information to improve your decision-making, "How We Decide" is an infinitely better resource.

I mean it wholeheartedly when I say that this book is everything that Blink should have been.

Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review

› See all 11 customer reviews on Amazon.ca

 

4.0 out of 5 stars How We Decide
This book is well written and easy to understand. Complicated science of the activity of the brain and what affects our brain activity is presented in lay terminology and... Read more

Published 3 months ago by Betty

4.0 out of 5 stars Good read
Haven't finished reading it yet(3/4) but the situation used as examples for how the work do that it does are very interesting to say the least. Read more

Published 19 months ago by Vincent Lachapelle

5.0 out of 5 stars A Powerful Book for Business
There are lots of book written about decision-making, but what is unique about Jonah Lehrer's terrific book, How We Decide, is that it is written from the point of view of... Read more

Published 20 months ago by Engage the Fox

4.0 out of 5 stars Good but flawed
As others have noted, this book is quite good at explaining not only "how we decide," but more important, how we decide wisely or foolishly. Read more

Published on April 22 2010 by Michael W. Perry

5.0 out of 5 stars How We Decide
This is an excellent, authoritative yet entertaining text on a complex and perhaps controversial topic. Read more

Published on Aug 20 2009 by D. E. Huggins

4.0 out of 5 stars How We Really Decide
How We Decide - Jonah Lehrer, 2009

After being blown away by his previous book, Proust Was A Neuroscientist, on the relationship between brain science and art, I... Read more

Published on May 15 2009 by D. C. Reid

5.0 out of 5 stars Superb insights into decision-making
This is very well written and referenced. This is a book about how parts of the brain affect decision-making. Different types of decisions may require different methods. Read more

Published on May 1 2009 by Karen M. Cooper

5.0 out of 5 stars A Highly Accessible Description of Helpful Decision Practices for Different Circumstances
Don't just Blink! Instead, read a series of well-chosen, beautifully told stories of successful and unsuccessful decision practices, along with some rules of thumb for when to... Read more

Published on April 21 2009 by Donald Mitchell

Search Customer Reviews
Only search this product's reviews

› See all 11 customer reviews on Amazon.ca

Search Listmania!