Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Book Review: The Believing Brain

Traveling long distance by plane gives you plenty of time to do some reading and, recently, I was able to get my hands on the latest book from Michael Shermer "The Believing Brain: From Ghosts and Gods to Politics and Conspiracies - How We Construct Beliefe and Reinforce Them as Thruts".
This is one of those books that take you to the very bottom of an interesting topic. You can read about pseudoscience, alternative medicine, UFOs, strange political views, etc, and you'll find plenty of reasons to see why believing in those things just does not make sense. However, Shermer's book shows how we come to those beliefs, how we cultivate them, seeing ourselves as the most reasonable people on the face of the Earth, and finally how we discard any information that goes contrary to our convictions.

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