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Ionjaw
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Posts: 2608
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I've been reading this Neal Stephenson book called REAMDE for what feels like forever, mind you it is 1000 pages long
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MADFX
Banned
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Location: Australia
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Read me & trust the idiot to do it.
#FreeSnape
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Christoph Burnicus
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Celestine Prophecies......I swear most of it rhymes. Also never had more spine tingles in my life....its like its reading my mind.....or I'm reading
mine....
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Ionjaw
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more shit posters on my dick, get in line noob
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Christoph Burnicus
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No, same poster. Replicated. Cos its funny.
[Edited on 24-5-2012 by Christoph Burnicus]
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gerling
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Quote: Originally posted by Ionjaw  | | I've been reading this Neal Stephenson book called REAMDE for what feels like forever, mind you it is 1000 pages long |
Ah! Are you enjoying it?
That was the first of his work I'd read (after giving up about 15 pages in thru Cryptonomicon, lent to me by an enthusiastic but incredibly
bong-addled friend a few years ago). Be keen to see what you think when you're done.
My trashy reading at the moment is urban PI fantasy a la Jim Butcher and Kat Richardson. Can't get enough of it.
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Ionjaw
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I read snow crash pretty recently which I thought started out strong (like, Neuromancer strong - and I don't say that lightly) but kinda started to
suck by the end.
REAMDE is totally different, less sci-fi and more of a thriller plot held together by ludicrous circumstances/coincidences
if snow crash was neuromancer then REAMDE is pattern recognition
which makes cryptonomicon the difference engine I guess
eh, I'll stop now
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gerling
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Ha. Careful, I love Pattern Recognition so you better not be deriding that shit!
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Ionjaw
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No I love pattern recognition too, in fact probably more than I do neuromancer although that is blasphemy in some quarters. But REAMDE is similar in
the sense that it (much like PR) happens in the Real World™ with no sci-fi trappings (yet...I'm nearly halfway through but seriously anything could
happen and it wouldn't surprise me)
it varies in quality in terms of the writing but show me a 1000 page novel that doesn't
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uosbwis.r.jewoy
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all boss.
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ultimate_hater
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I've decided to stop reading and just wait for the singularity to occur so I can become an immortal robot slash conscious piece of software... also
I'm trying to find a new Ray Kurzweil book...
Purchasing Omega Replica Watches To Remain Fashionable. Compared with the high degree of authenticity of Omega watches prices they are effective
alternatives to truly appreciate the beauty of luxury. Can firstly that the cost of a genuine Omega clock as much as $45 while the cost of a user
replica as a fraction the former is. If you are looking for accessories to your everyday look chic and improve the social status look no further than
the Omega replica watches. Make sure you set the focus to the crowd.
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Honky
no chit chat
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Highly recommend The First Circle. On to Freakanomics now which is a bit of fun, also reading The Oddysey.
He came to my house and kicked in the glass/ next day i made him pay for a new door.
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Honky
no chit chat
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Freakonomics is a pretty entertaining read...
He came to my house and kicked in the glass/ next day i made him pay for a new door.
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Christoph Burnicus
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We form our beliefs for a variety of subjective, personal, emotional, and psychological reasons in the context of environments created by family,
friends, colleagues, culture, and society at large; after forming our beliefs we then defend, justify, and rationalize them with a host of
intellectual reasons, cogent arguments, and rational explanations. Beliefs come first, explanations for beliefs follow.
Dr. Shermer also provides the neuroscience behind our beliefs. The brain is a belief engine. From sensory data flowing in through the senses the brain
naturally begins to look for and find patterns, and then infuses those patterns with meaning. The first process Dr. Shermer calls patternicity: the
tendency to find meaningful patterns in both meaningful and meaningless data. The second process he calls agenticity: the tendency to infuse patterns
with meaning, intention, and agency.
We can’t help believing. Our brains evolved to connect the dots of our world into meaningful patterns that explain why things happen. These
meaningful patterns become beliefs. Once beliefs are formed the brain begins to look for and find confirmatory evidence in support of those beliefs,
which adds an emotional boost of further confidence in the beliefs and thereby accelerates the process of reinforcing them, and round and round the
process goes in a positive feedback loop of belief confirmation. Dr. Shermer outlines the numerous cognitive tools our brains engage to reinforce our
beliefs as truths and to insure that we are always right.
Interlaced with his theory of belief, Dr. Shermer provides countless real-world examples of belief from all realms of life, and in the end he
demonstrates why science is the best tool ever devised to determine whether or not a belief matches reality.
BRIEF SYNOPSIS
The Believing Brain is divided into four parts. Part I, “Journeys of Belief,” includes personal narratives of belief, including that of the
author; Part II, “The Biology of Belief,” bores into the brain and explains how the mind works to form beliefs, from thoughts and ideas down to
neurons firing across tiny synaptic gaps as they talk to one another chemically; Part III, “Belief in Things Unseen” applies my theory beliefs to
the afterlife, God, aliens, and conspiracies; and Part IV, “Belief in Things Seen,” examines the role of beliefs in politics, economics, and
ideologies, explains how belief confirmation works to assure that we are always right, and then explores the history of scientific exploration, from
the world to the cosmos, and how science works to overcome the power of belief.
The Believing Brain begins with three personal belief stories. The first story is about a man whom you will have never heard of but who had a profound
and life-changing experience in the wee hours of the morning many decades ago that still haunts him to this day and drives him to search for ultimate
meaning in the cosmos. The second story is about a man whom you will most definitely have heard of as he is one of the greatest scientists of our age,
and he too had a life-changing early-morning experience that confirmed his decision to make a religious leap of faith. The third story is Dr.
Shermer’s own passage from believer to skeptic, and what he learned along the way that drove him into a professional career of the scientific study
of belief systems.
From narrative stories Dr. Shermer turns to an architecture of belief systems, how they are formed, nourished, reinforced, changed, and extinguished,
first conceptually through the two theoretical constructs he developed called patternicity and agenticity, and then delve deeper into how these
cognitive processes evolved and what purpose they served in the lives of our ancestors as well as in our lives today. Dr. Shermer then bores deeper
into the brain, right down to the neurophysiology of belief system construction at the single neuron level, and then reconstructs from the bottom up
how brains form beliefs. Then we shall examine how belief systems operate with regard to belief in religion, the afterlife, God, extraterrestrials,
conspiracies, politics, economics, and ideologies of all stripes, and then consider how a host of cognitive processes convince us that our beliefs are
truths. In the final chapters we will consider how we know any of our beliefs are believable, which patterns are true and which false, which agents
are real and which are chimera, and how science works as the ultimate pattern detection device.
In the end, all of us are trying to make sense of the world, and nature has gifted us with a double-edge sword that cuts for and against. On one edge,
our brains are the most complex and sophisticated information processing machines in the universe, capable of understanding not only the universe
itself but of understanding the process of understanding. On the other edge, by the very same process of forming beliefs about the universe and
ourselves, we are also more capable than any other species of self-deception and illusion, of fooling ourselves while we are trying to avoid being
fooled by nature.
This book is a well thought out adventure into the human mind, explored in maticulous detail, it has helped me
understand myself…
This book is a must for anyone who wishes to learn how to think rationally on subjects such as mystical experiences,
religion or conspiracy theorys.
See patterns? Read this. Understanding this multi-faceted existance is key to logical and rational debate. So you can
super-charge your ideas with the truth…
[Edited on 30-5-2012 by Christoph Burnicus]
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gerling
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Just finished this, really enjoyed it.
About to start this:
[Edited on 31-5-2012 by gerling]
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Eldy_H
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Registered: 4-5-2005
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| Quote: Originally posted by Christoph Burnicus |
We form our beliefs for a variety of subjective, personal, emotional, and psychological reasons in the context of environments created by family,
friends, colleagues, culture, and society at large; after forming our beliefs we then defend, justify, and rationalize them with a host of
intellectual reasons, cogent arguments, and rational explanations. Beliefs come first, explanations for beliefs follow.
Dr. Shermer also provides the neuroscience behind our beliefs. The brain is a belief engine. From sensory data flowing in through the senses the brain
naturally begins to look for and find patterns, and then infuses those patterns with meaning. The first process Dr. Shermer calls patternicity: the
tendency to find meaningful patterns in both meaningful and meaningless data. The second process he calls agenticity: the tendency to infuse patterns
with meaning, intention, and agency.
We can’t help believing. Our brains evolved to connect the dots of our world into meaningful patterns that explain why things happen. These
meaningful patterns become beliefs. Once beliefs are formed the brain begins to look for and find confirmatory evidence in support of those beliefs,
which adds an emotional boost of further confidence in the beliefs and thereby accelerates the process of reinforcing them, and round and round the
process goes in a positive feedback loop of belief confirmation. Dr. Shermer outlines the numerous cognitive tools our brains engage to reinforce our
beliefs as truths and to insure that we are always right.
Interlaced with his theory of belief, Dr. Shermer provides countless real-world examples of belief from all realms of life, and in the end he
demonstrates why science is the best tool ever devised to determine whether or not a belief matches reality.
BRIEF SYNOPSIS
The Believing Brain is divided into four parts. Part I, “Journeys of Belief,” includes personal narratives of belief, including that of the
author; Part II, “The Biology of Belief,” bores into the brain and explains how the mind works to form beliefs, from thoughts and ideas down to
neurons firing across tiny synaptic gaps as they talk to one another chemically; Part III, “Belief in Things Unseen” applies my theory beliefs to
the afterlife, God, aliens, and conspiracies; and Part IV, “Belief in Things Seen,” examines the role of beliefs in politics, economics, and
ideologies, explains how belief confirmation works to assure that we are always right, and then explores the history of scientific exploration, from
the world to the cosmos, and how science works to overcome the power of belief.
The Believing Brain begins with three personal belief stories. The first story is about a man whom you will have never heard of but who had a profound
and life-changing experience in the wee hours of the morning many decades ago that still haunts him to this day and drives him to search for ultimate
meaning in the cosmos. The second story is about a man whom you will most definitely have heard of as he is one of the greatest scientists of our age,
and he too had a life-changing early-morning experience that confirmed his decision to make a religious leap of faith. The third story is Dr.
Shermer’s own passage from believer to skeptic, and what he learned along the way that drove him into a professional career of the scientific study
of belief systems.
From narrative stories Dr. Shermer turns to an architecture of belief systems, how they are formed, nourished, reinforced, changed, and extinguished,
first conceptually through the two theoretical constructs he developed called patternicity and agenticity, and then delve deeper into how these
cognitive processes evolved and what purpose they served in the lives of our ancestors as well as in our lives today. Dr. Shermer then bores deeper
into the brain, right down to the neurophysiology of belief system construction at the single neuron level, and then reconstructs from the bottom up
how brains form beliefs. Then we shall examine how belief systems operate with regard to belief in religion, the afterlife, God, extraterrestrials,
conspiracies, politics, economics, and ideologies of all stripes, and then consider how a host of cognitive processes convince us that our beliefs are
truths. In the final chapters we will consider how we know any of our beliefs are believable, which patterns are true and which false, which agents
are real and which are chimera, and how science works as the ultimate pattern detection device.
In the end, all of us are trying to make sense of the world, and nature has gifted us with a double-edge sword that cuts for and against. On one edge,
our brains are the most complex and sophisticated information processing machines in the universe, capable of understanding not only the universe
itself but of understanding the process of understanding. On the other edge, by the very same process of forming beliefs about the universe and
ourselves, we are also more capable than any other species of self-deception and illusion, of fooling ourselves while we are trying to avoid being
fooled by nature.
This book is a well thought out adventure into the human mind, explored in maticulous detail, it has helped me
understand myself…
This book is a must for anyone who wishes to learn how to think rationally on subjects such as mystical experiences,
religion or conspiracy theorys.
See patterns? Read this. Understanding this multi-faceted existance is key to logical and rational debate. So you can
super-charge your ideas with the truth…
[Edited on 30-5-2012 by Christoph Burnicus] |
Sounds interesting, however that synopsis sounds difficult to digest without some background on (and interest in) physiological psychology.
I’ve been studying critical reasoning this semester and have covered some of the issues (beside the psychology parts) that the book you mentioned
seems to cover, yet the literature I’ve been studying comes across a bit easier to digest for those new to the idea of this style of thinking.
This is the book we have used for most of it; it has countless case studies on aliens, tarot cards, ghosts etc and does a wonderful job of using
critical reasoning to explain exactly why we aren’t justified to believe them, how to argue that case, and why so many people do in fact take these
things as truth (various biases and fallacies etc).
However this book doesn't dive so much into the reinforcement part, which sounds fascinating from what you have mentioned.
Cheers for sharing, keen to hear what else you are reading.
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Christoph Burnicus
Oz Hip Hop Member
Posts: 139
Registered: 21-5-2012
Location: Planet Perth
Member Is Offline
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Yeah the summary provided was just a copy/paste job.....I found the book surprisingly easy to follow. Im not into reading things which are
unnecessarily complicated, I like to be taken on journeys, which the book provides.
I got a download with over a hundred books on super interesting topics...so as I sift through and find the 'unputdownables' I'll be adding to this
post.
* Everyware: The Dawning Age of Ubiquitous Computing - Adam Greenfield
* The World Without Us - Alan Weisman
* Wicked Plants - Amy Stewart
* How God Changes Your Brain - Andrew Newberg, M. D., Mark Robert Waldman
[center]* The Story of Stuff - Annie Leonard, Ariane Conrad
* Fingerprints of God: The Search for the Science of Spirituality - Barbara Bradley Hagerty
* The Secret Life of the Grown-Up Brain: The Surprising Talents of the Middle -Barbara Strauch
* Bad Science - Ben Goldacre
* Summer World: A Season of Bounty - Bernd Heinrich
* Winter World: The Ingenuity of Animal Survival - Bernd Heinrich
* A Short History of Nearly Everything - Bill Bryson
* Seeing Further: The Story of Science & the Royal Society - Bill Bryson
* The Most Human Human: What Talking With Computers Teaches Us About What It Means to Be Alive - Brian Christian
* Wonders of the Universe - Brian Cox, Andrew Cohen
* Why Does E=mc2? - Brian Cox, Jeffrey Robert Forshaw
* The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos - Brian Greene
* The Elegant Universe - Brian Greene
* Total Recall - C. Gordon Bell, Jim Gemmell
* The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark - Carl Sagan
* Cosmos - Carl Sagan
* Pale Blue Dot - Carl Sagan
* A Planet of Viruses - Carl Zimmer
* Now You See It: How the Brain Science of Attention Will Transform the Way We Live, Work, and Learn - Cathy N. Davidson
* The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, Or, the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life - Charles Darwin
* Sun in a Bottle - Charles Seife
* Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence - Christian Parenti
* The Fallen Sky - Christopher Cokinos
* Social Engineering: The Art of Human Hacking - Christopher Hadnagy
* Moonshot: The Inside Story of Mankind's Greatest Adventure - Dan Parry
* The Discoverers - Daniel Joseph Boorstin
* Galileo's Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith, and Love - Dava Sobel
* Longitude - Dava Sobel
* A More Perfect Heaven - Dava Sobel
* The Illustrated Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time - Dava Sobel, William J. H.
Andrewes
* The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World - David Deutsch
* Reef Madness: Charles Darwin, Alexander Agassiz, and the Meaning of Coral - David Dobbs
* The Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinctions - David Quammen
* Natural Acts: A Sidelong View of Science and Nature - David Quammen
* Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations - David R. Montgomery
* I Am a Strange Loop - Douglas R. Hofstadter
* The Clockwork Universe: Isaac Newton, the Royal Society, and the Birth of the Modern World - Edward Dolnick
* The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating - Elisabeth Tova Bailey
* Darwin Slept Here - Eric N. Simons
* Cathedral, Forge, and Waterwheel: Technology and Invention in the Middle Ages - Frances Gies, Joseph Gies
* The Pleasure Instinct: Why We Crave Adventure, Chocolate, Pheromones, and Music - Gene Wallenstein
* Why Aren't We Saving the Planet? - Geoffrey Beattie
* The Next Decade: What the World Will Look Like - George Friedman
* Gut Feelings - Gerd Gigerenzer
* A World Without Ice - H. N. Pollack
* Sweetness and Light: The Mysterious History of the Honeybee - Hattie Ellis
* The Weather of the Future: Heat Waves, Extreme Storms, and Other Scenes From a Climate-Changed Planet - Heidi Cullen
* Engineers of Dreams: Great Bridge Builders and the Spanning of America - Henry Petroski
* The Evolution of Useful Things - Henry Petroski
* The Battery - Henry Schlesinger
* Insectopedia - Hugh Raffles
* The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World - Iain McGilchrist
* Ecological Intelligence: Rediscovering Ourselves in Nature - Ian McCallum
* Extraterrestrial Civilizations - Isaac Asimov
* The Day the Universe Changed - James Burke
* Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman - James Gleick
[center]* Chaos - James Gleick
* Eels: An Exploration, From New Zealand to the Sargasso, of the World's Most Mysterious Fish - James Prosek
* No Bone Unturned: Inside the World of a Top Forensic Scientist and His Work on America's Most Notorious Crimes and Disasters - Jeff Benedict
* Why Evolution Is True - Jerry A. Coyne
* The Book of Nothing - John D. Barrow
* The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History - John M. Barry
* Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: The Untold Story of English - John McWhorter
* The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness and Greed - John Vaillant
* Breakthrough!: How the 10 Greatest Discoveries in Medicine Saved Millions and Changed * Our View of the World - Jon Queijo
* Proust Was a Neuroscientist - Jonah Lehrer
* How We Decide - Jonah Lehrer
* Long for This World: The Strange Science of Immortality - Jonathan Weiner
* Demon Fish: Travels Through the Hidden World of Sharks - Juliet Eilperin
* Kingpin: How One Hacker Took Over the Billion Dollar Cyber Crime Underground - Kevin Poulsen
[center]* The World in 2050: Four Forces Shaping Civilization's Northern Future - Laurence C. Smith
* The Physics of Star Trek - Lawrence Maxwell Krauss
* Drunkard's Walk - Leonard Mlodinow
* Knocking on Heaven's Door - Lisa Randall
* Quantum: Einstein, Bohr and the Great Debate About the Nature of Reality - Manjit Kumar
* The Animal Manifesto: Six Reasons for Expanding Our Compassion Footprint - Marc Bekoff
* The Day We Found the Universe - Marcia Bartusiak
* Quantum Theory Cannot Hurt You: A Guide to the Universe - Marcus Chown
* The Golden Ratio: The Story of Phi, the World's Most Astonishing Number - Mario Livio
* Edison and the Electric Chair: A Story of Light and Death - Mark Essig
* Hubble Space Telescope: New Views of the Universe - Mark Voit
* Sex on Six Legs: Lessons on Life, Love, and Language From the Insect World - Marlene Zuk
* Windswept: The Story of Wind and Weather - Marq de Villiers
* Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void - Mary Roach
* The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature - Matt Ridley
* Complexity: A Guided Tour - Melanie Mitchell
* Absolutely Small - Michael D. Fayer
* Human - Michael S. Gazzaniga
* The Believing Brain - Michael Shermer
* Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives - Michael Specter
* Physics of the Future: How Science Will Shape Human Destiny and Our Daily Lives by the Year 2100 - Michio Kaku
* How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming - Mike Brown
* Riding Rockets - Mike Mullane
* The American Plague - Molly Caldwell Crosby
* Death by Black Hole: And Other Cosmic Quandaries - Neil deGrasse Tyson
* Why Don't Penguins' Feet Freeze?: And 114 Other Questions - New Scientist
* Why Can't Elephants Jump? - New Scientist
* Deadly Choices: How the Anti-Vaccine Movement Threatens Us All - Paul A. Offit
* The Great Disruption: How the Climate Crisis Will Transform the Global Economy - Paul Gilding
* Collider - Paul Halpern
* The Whale: In Search of the Giants of the Sea - Philip Hoare
* Death From the Skies! - Philip Tate Phd., Philip C. Plait
* Lost Woods: The Discovered Writing of Rachel Carson - Rachel Carson, Linda Lear
* Strange New Worlds - Ray Jayawardhana
* The Selfish Gene - Richard Dawkins
* The Greatest Show on Earth - Richard Dawkins
* Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder - Richard Dawkins
* The Age of Wonder: The Romantic Generation and the Discovery of the Beauty and Terror of Science - Richard Holmes
* The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life - Richard J. Herrnstein, Charles A. Murray
* The 4 Percent Universe: Dark Matter, Dark Energy, and the Race to Discover the Rest of Reality - Richard Panek
* Paranormality: Why We See What Isn't There - Richard Wiseman
* Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human - Richard Wrangham
* Everything Is Going to Kill Everybody: The Terrifyingly Real Ways the World Wants You Dead - Robert Brockway
* Alice in Quantumland: An Allegory of Quantum Physics - Robert Gilmore
* The Theory of Almost Everything: The Standard Model, the Unsung Triumph of Modern Physics - Robert Oerter
* Rats: A Year With New York's Most Unwanted Inhabitants - Robert Sullivan
* The Logic of Lying - Robert Trivers
* Anatomy of an Epidemic - Robert Whitaker
* What Einstein Told His Barber: More Scientific Answers to Everyday Questions - Robert Wolke
* The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values - Sam Harris
* The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World From the Periodic Table of the Elements - Sam Kean
* From Eternity to Here - Sean Carroll
* The Mind and the Brain - Sharon Begley, Jeffrey M. Schwartz
* Survival of the Sickest: A Medical Maverick Discovers Why We Need Disease - Sharon Moalem, Jonathan Prince
* Curious Folks Ask: 162 Real Answers on Amazing Inventions, Fascinating Products, and Medical Mysteries - Sherry Seethaler
* Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other - Sherry Turkle
* How We Die: Reflections on Life's Final Chapter - Sherwin B. Nuland
* Shape of Inner Space - Shing-tung Yau, Steve Nadi
* The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer - Siddhartha Mukherjee
* The Science of Evil: On Empathy and the Origins of Cruelty - Simon Baron-Cohen
* When Science Goes Wrong - Simon Levay
* Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded: August 27, 1883 - Simon Winchester
* Illustrated Theory of Everything: The Origin and Fate of the Universe - Stephen Hawking
* A Briefer History of Time - Stephen Hawking
* A Brief History of Time - Stephen Hawking, Grover Gardner
* The Grand Design - Stephen Hawking, Leonard Mlodinow
* Darwin's Island: The Galapagos in the Garden of England - Steve Jones
* The Ghost Map: A Street, an Epidemic and the Two Men Who Battle to Save Victorian London - Steven Johnson
* Water: The Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power, and Civilization - Steven Solomon
* Honeybee Democracy - Thomas D. Seeley
* The Ego Tunnel - Thomas Metzinger
* Coming of Age in the Milky Way - Timothy Ferris
* Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (And What It Says About Us) - Tom Vanderbilt
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Skematics
don\'t look at me funny blud
Posts: 3648
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lol drunk
[Edited on 6-6-2012 by Skematics]
http://www.DFTC.com.au
http://www.soundcloud.com/skematic
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Eldy_H
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Currently reading this for a research essay.
Very interesting topic, especially learning about the World Bank's idea of 'development.' This goes hand in hand with a book I purchased due to
recommendations in this very thread, Confessions of an Economic Hitman by John Perkins. I need to re-read that now I have more coverage on this issue
of the Third World debt crisis.
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Mackula
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| Quote: Originally posted by Eldy_H | | Quote: Originally posted by Christoph Burnicus |
We form our beliefs for a variety of subjective, personal, emotional, and psychological reasons in the context of environments created by family,
friends, colleagues, culture, and society at large; after forming our beliefs we then defend, justify, and rationalize them with a host of
intellectual reasons, cogent arguments, and rational explanations. Beliefs come first, explanations for beliefs follow.
Dr. Shermer also provides the neuroscience behind our beliefs. The brain is a belief engine. From sensory data flowing in through the senses the brain
naturally begins to look for and find patterns, and then infuses those patterns with meaning. The first process Dr. Shermer calls patternicity: the
tendency to find meaningful patterns in both meaningful and meaningless data. The second process he calls agenticity: the tendency to infuse patterns
with meaning, intention, and agency.
We can’t help believing. Our brains evolved to connect the dots of our world into meaningful patterns that explain why things happen. These
meaningful patterns become beliefs. Once beliefs are formed the brain begins to look for and find confirmatory evidence in support of those beliefs,
which adds an emotional boost of further confidence in the beliefs and thereby accelerates the process of reinforcing them, and round and round the
process goes in a positive feedback loop of belief confirmation. Dr. Shermer outlines the numerous cognitive tools our brains engage to reinforce our
beliefs as truths and to insure that we are always right.
Interlaced with his theory of belief, Dr. Shermer provides countless real-world examples of belief from all realms of life, and in the end he
demonstrates why science is the best tool ever devised to determine whether or not a belief matches reality.
BRIEF SYNOPSIS
The Believing Brain is divided into four parts. Part I, “Journeys of Belief,” includes personal narratives of belief, including that of the
author; Part II, “The Biology of Belief,” bores into the brain and explains how the mind works to form beliefs, from thoughts and ideas down to
neurons firing across tiny synaptic gaps as they talk to one another chemically; Part III, “Belief in Things Unseen” applies my theory beliefs to
the afterlife, God, aliens, and conspiracies; and Part IV, “Belief in Things Seen,” examines the role of beliefs in politics, economics, and
ideologies, explains how belief confirmation works to assure that we are always right, and then explores the history of scientific exploration, from
the world to the cosmos, and how science works to overcome the power of belief.
The Believing Brain begins with three personal belief stories. The first story is about a man whom you will have never heard of but who had a profound
and life-changing experience in the wee hours of the morning many decades ago that still haunts him to this day and drives him to search for ultimate
meaning in the cosmos. The second story is about a man whom you will most definitely have heard of as he is one of the greatest scientists of our age,
and he too had a life-changing early-morning experience that confirmed his decision to make a religious leap of faith. The third story is Dr.
Shermer’s own passage from believer to skeptic, and what he learned along the way that drove him into a professional career of the scientific study
of belief systems.
From narrative stories Dr. Shermer turns to an architecture of belief systems, how they are formed, nourished, reinforced, changed, and extinguished,
first conceptually through the two theoretical constructs he developed called patternicity and agenticity, and then delve deeper into how these
cognitive processes evolved and what purpose they served in the lives of our ancestors as well as in our lives today. Dr. Shermer then bores deeper
into the brain, right down to the neurophysiology of belief system construction at the single neuron level, and then reconstructs from the bottom up
how brains form beliefs. Then we shall examine how belief systems operate with regard to belief in religion, the afterlife, God, extraterrestrials,
conspiracies, politics, economics, and ideologies of all stripes, and then consider how a host of cognitive processes convince us that our beliefs are
truths. In the final chapters we will consider how we know any of our beliefs are believable, which patterns are true and which false, which agents
are real and which are chimera, and how science works as the ultimate pattern detection device.
In the end, all of us are trying to make sense of the world, and nature has gifted us with a double-edge sword that cuts for and against. On one edge,
our brains are the most complex and sophisticated information processing machines in the universe, capable of understanding not only the universe
itself but of understanding the process of understanding. On the other edge, by the very same process of forming beliefs about the universe and
ourselves, we are also more capable than any other species of self-deception and illusion, of fooling ourselves while we are trying to avoid being
fooled by nature.
This book is a well thought out adventure into the human mind, explored in maticulous detail, it has helped me
understand myself…
This book is a must for anyone who wishes to learn how to think rationally on subjects such as mystical experiences,
religion or conspiracy theorys.
See patterns? Read this. Understanding this multi-faceted existance is key to logical and rational debate. So you can
super-charge your ideas with the truth…
[Edited on 30-5-2012 by Christoph Burnicus] |
Sounds interesting, however that synopsis sounds difficult to digest without some background on (and interest in) physiological psychology.
I’ve been studying critical reasoning this semester and have covered some of the issues (beside the psychology parts) that the book you mentioned
seems to cover, yet the literature I’ve been studying comes across a bit easier to digest for those new to the idea of this style of thinking.
This is the book we have used for most of it; it has countless case studies on aliens, tarot cards, ghosts etc and does a wonderful job of using
critical reasoning to explain exactly why we aren’t justified to believe them, how to argue that case, and why so many people do in fact take these
things as truth (various biases and fallacies etc).
However this book doesn't dive so much into the reinforcement part, which sounds fascinating from what you have mentioned.
Cheers for sharing, keen to hear what else you are reading.
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critical thinking is a bit like design - it can't be taught, well.
D O T H E M A T H
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Ionjaw
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http://malcolmgladwellbookgenerator.com/
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HesGloomy
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needs to be hooked up the the omegle thread and some hat memes for real best sellers
So: Gary, the Mona Lisa. This is trash.
TRASH. How many tigers or skulls are in this painting?
THE ANSWER IS ZERO, WHICH IS THE garyEST NUMBER OF SKULLS OR TIGERS YOU CAN HAVE IN A PAINTING.
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Ionjaw
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Bill Motherfucking Cosby
By the author of The Tipping Point
how Jello Pudding secretly shapes the world
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Eamer
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| Quote: Originally posted by Honky | | Highly recommend The First Circle. On to Freakanomics now which is a bit of fun, also reading The Oddysey. |
Your not alone in suggesting The First Circle. Never encountered an author with such a true yet creatively intelligent imagination.
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vonske
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this was fucking fabulous
[Edited on 6-6-2012 by vonske]
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