This is Buonomano’s first popular science book, which was published over a decade before this review. It was well received by critics and readers alike for its accessibility and relevant subject matter. No doubt that the light humor sprinkled throughout the text also helped boost its popularity. At its core, this book discusses how the brain is not ideally structured to help us cope with many of the challenges we face in modern society. In essence, the evolution of the human brain has lagged behind the evolution of human culture, and as such, is out of phase with our current environment. This causes a number of behavioral quirks to creep up and interfere with our daily lives, with more or less disruptive results.
Being aware of these “bugs” is not only enlightening (and humbling), but can also help us avoid many of these behavioral missteps. On these grounds alone I would highly recommend perusing this book, as it will definitely help anyone fine-tune and optimize common behaviors and decisions. Indeed, in these trying times of social tension (2024), this book becomes even more relevant. In its pages readers will find explanations for some of humanity’s irrational behaviors against each other. More importantly, we also get some ideas on how to bypass these inclinations.
My only worry when approaching this book is that without any additional context, it might come across as negative; presenting us with an inherently flawed brain that has a penchant for getting us in trouble. I would appeal to readers to perhaps look at the brain from a slightly different perspective. Rather than seeing it as a faulty machine, we can approach it as a complex machine whose behavioral output is bounded by its structure. That is to say, the way the machine is built naturally limits what it is able to do. Saying that the brain is flawed because it is not good at counting numbers, for example, is like saying that a refrigerator is flawed because it cannot roast a chicken. True, not being good at keeping track of numbers can get us into much of trouble in modern society, and we should be aware of this limitation, but we should also be kind and open-minded when “judging” the brain. It simply was not built for certain tasks that are now common in many modern cultures.
