Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

i was looking forward to this book and got it as soon as it came out, and while it does have some good moments all in all it fails on a good number of conclusions. a particularly annoying one is one that is very fashionable at the moment. humans don't have free will because EEG tests and MRI scans show brain activity before our consciousness is aware that we are going to do something. the conclusion by the author being that it proves we are automata and our consciousness is just fooled into thinking we made the decision. the problems with this are many. in the first place he is confusing conscious control with will. if we make an unconscious decision before we are conscious of it, it doesn't mean we are automata because our unconscious is us as much as our consciousness. if we were getting directions from aliens or CIA computers or whatnot, ok, then maybe we wouldn't have free will. but if our own mind made the decision, whether conscious or not, it is still us. that we are not consciously aware of it does not make it not ours. after all, it is us who "train" our unconscious. we can ride a bike home unconsciously --we know how to keep our balance, pedal, make turns and make our way home down a familiar path without having to consciously think about it. that's because we taught ourselves how to ride the bike and get home in the first place. we trained our unconscious to easily make those decisions for us so keeping our balance etc. would not have to be something we have to have our conscious focused on. so while we may not be consciously aware of how we pedaled our way home, it's still an activity we willed to happen. another problem with the no-free-will belief is that it's based on MRI's and EEG's. the measurements that MRI's and EEG's take are hard science, but the interpretations of those measurements are an ever evolving art form. a certain part of our brain lights up on a screen and gets classified as "that's the part of your brain that decides X and Y" but in all truth we actually don't know. it's just an educated guess based on A usually happens before B therefore A is the cause of B --ironically a fallacy that's explored in the book in a different context. it might be an educated guess but it's still just a guess and to base your whole life philosophy on what is still basically a very young science is a beginner's mistake. the author just takes the magical thinking of the shamans wearing white lab coats as hard truth from the heavens and doesn't make much of an attempt to delve into the the vague reality of MRI and EEG interpretations. a thing to consider is that in the past few years (less than a decade) scientist have discovered that the fatty tissues in the brain actually communicate with each other through complex chemical means that we are barely starting to figure out. this fatty tissue composes the majority of our brains and its activity is not measured by EEG's or MRI's. that neurons and their firings have such prominence in contemporary brain science is only due to the fact that we are able to measure that activity, but the fact is that at this moment we are not able to measure the majority of activity in our brains. MRI's and EEG's only cover a small sliver of what's going on and they only measure certain activities and we have no way of truly knowing what exactly those activities mean. they are great tools to ascertain things like brain damage and such but using them as mind readers still requires a leap of faith. there is still much magical thinking involved in this area of studies and to use it to prove theories about magical thinking is a bit magical in and of itself. the book does have some good moments and it's a fast breezy read, so i wouldn't discount it all together but in the end it's another malcolm gladwell style book without gladwell's incisive observations or deft ability to communicate the marvels of the world in a marvelous way. the author's humor is painfully cheesy and it detracts from the reading instead of adding to it. i would also advice him to quit referencing science fiction novels that he read in his youth for no other reason than that it's just corny. also his reliance on his own dude tastes are a bit of a hindrance. while his review of sport fan and fishermen superstitions is interesting he just glosses over the myriads of magical beliefs held by many new agers --a crowd whose size is a lot bigger than superstitious fishermen or superstitious sports fans and who rely more on those beliefs to make serious life decisions. as you might guess, the new age beliefs are mainly held by women while the sport fans and fishermen who believe in jinxes are mainly men. there are whole industries based on magical beliefs but he seems to have barely dipped his toe in those waters. all in all a promising premise and some good content but worth a read only if you want a quick read and borrowed the book from a library. i would have given it a 2.5 stars rating but you can't do half stars on amazon. with that said, it felt much safer to round out to 2 instead of 3 stars.