Subliminal

Marvelous read.
The dynamic of this book, unlike that of ‘Thinking Fast and Slow', is so righteously tuned, keeping the reader thoroughly hooked. I was eating my way through the pages. The author is outright witty and happens to be a theoretical physicist who’s probing a psychological subject – neuroscience to be precise. Basically, a great mash up.

The theory of mind, how it correlates with human behavior and social norms. The impact of our unconscious on everyday life. The biases and judgments we conjure. The stances we take, opinions we formulate and arguments we postulate. Objectivity, in the broad sense of the word, is put to question.

How truly independent are we regarding to how truly independent we think we are?

Experiment after experiment, social study after another the reader learns how fallible the brain process really is. Like the blind spot where the optic nerve links to the retina, most of our experiences suffer from incomplete sets of data, yet we manage to draw our conclusions by combining, filling and interpolating the available vertices, or those we judge apt to. Right down to scientists, we keep clinging to false theories we have invested in (e.g. pro-static universe theorists or anti-global climate change advocates.)


And when the book seems to converge toward human impotence and overall inability to impartially judge events, Mlodinow states that,

“studies show that people with the most accurate self-perceptions tend to be moderately depressed, suffer from low self-esteem, or both.”

He adds,

“An overly positive self-evaluation, on the other hand, is normal and healthy.”

So after all the critical analysis of the brain workings, after all the thought experiments are we to conclude that, whether or not we have power over our limbic system, we should leave it alone, that intuitive data be left alone, that a scrupulous conscious inspection is dismissible? Since an overly positive self-evaluation is normal, exclusively common might I add, are we to conclude that introspection aiming to subsume objectivity under the realm of the self should rather be discouraged, an end we should not strive for?

“Unlike phenomena in physics, in life, events can depend largely upon which theory we choose to believe. It is a gift of the human mind to be extraordinarily open to accepting the theory of ourselves that pushes us in the direction of survival, and even happiness.”

Then I guess we have to choose our beliefs wisely.