From David Brook's book, "The Social Animal":
Let's say you spent $1.10 on a pen and pad of paper. If you spent a dollar more for the pad than the pen, how much did the pen cost?
Level 1 (the unconscious) wants to tell you that the pen cost 10 cents because in its dumb, blockheaded way, it wants to break the money into the $1 part and the 10-cent part, even though the real answer is that you spent 5 cents for the pen.
Because of this tendency, people are bad at calculating risks. Level 1 develops an inordinate fear of rare but spectacular threats, but ignores threats that are around every day. People fear planes, even though everybody knows car travel is more dangerous. They fear chain saws, even though nearly ten times more people are injured each year on playground equipment.
Here's my review of the book:
Material lacks depth and fictional characters are insipid,October 28, 2011
Mr. Brooks covers lots of intriguing scientific facts and theories behind human behavior. The area that is emphasized the most is the importance of the subconscious mind, and how conscious thought is subservient to it. All of this material is presented through a couple of fictional characters and their story from birth through old age. For readers of non-fiction, this can be a bit of a put off. There is potential confusion surrounding the behavior and thoughts of the fictional characters and whether they have any factual basis or scientific merit. Mr. Brooks breaks away from the stories intermittently throughout the book to discuss the more serious topics, but intertwining fiction and non-fiction gives short shrift to both. While the material presented is pertinent and plentiful, the fictional account detracts and marginalizes the serious work here.
From the acknowledgements section, "This book is an attempt to... integrate science and psychology with sociology, politics, cultural commentary, and the literature of success."
A day after reading the book from cover to cover, I can recall considerably less factual material than fiction, but I'll never forget this: "Measured at its highest potential, the conscious mind still has a processing capacity 200,000 times weaker than the unconscious." Perhaps my unconscious mind feels differently about this book and I'm not aware of it...
Let's say you spent $1.10 on a pen and pad of paper. If you spent a dollar more for the pad than the pen, how much did the pen cost?
Level 1 (the unconscious) wants to tell you that the pen cost 10 cents because in its dumb, blockheaded way, it wants to break the money into the $1 part and the 10-cent part, even though the real answer is that you spent 5 cents for the pen.
Because of this tendency, people are bad at calculating risks. Level 1 develops an inordinate fear of rare but spectacular threats, but ignores threats that are around every day. People fear planes, even though everybody knows car travel is more dangerous. They fear chain saws, even though nearly ten times more people are injured each year on playground equipment.
Here's my review of the book:
Material lacks depth and fictional characters are insipid,
Mr. Brooks covers lots of intriguing scientific facts and theories behind human behavior. The area that is emphasized the most is the importance of the subconscious mind, and how conscious thought is subservient to it. All of this material is presented through a couple of fictional characters and their story from birth through old age. For readers of non-fiction, this can be a bit of a put off. There is potential confusion surrounding the behavior and thoughts of the fictional characters and whether they have any factual basis or scientific merit. Mr. Brooks breaks away from the stories intermittently throughout the book to discuss the more serious topics, but intertwining fiction and non-fiction gives short shrift to both. While the material presented is pertinent and plentiful, the fictional account detracts and marginalizes the serious work here.
From the acknowledgements section, "This book is an attempt to... integrate science and psychology with sociology, politics, cultural commentary, and the literature of success."
A day after reading the book from cover to cover, I can recall considerably less factual material than fiction, but I'll never forget this: "Measured at its highest potential, the conscious mind still has a processing capacity 200,000 times weaker than the unconscious." Perhaps my unconscious mind feels differently about this book and I'm not aware of it...
It seems that people overweight dangers are unpredictable and catastrophic. That is why more fear is generated by worry over a plane crashes or shark attacks than diabetes (which kills way more people per year than the others). Malcolm Gladwell has looked that this phenomena from the perspective of terrorism. Causing these random and catastrophic attacks, relatively few terrorists can hold a large population in fear and change behaviors. -SLP
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