On Being Certain: Believing You Are Right Even When You’re Not
On Being Certain: Believing You Are Aptly Even When You’re Not Books
- ISBN13: 9780312541521
- Shape up: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
You recognize when you know something for certain, aptly? You “know” the sky is blue, or that the traffic light had turned green, or where you were on the morning of September 11, 2001–you know these things, well, because you just do.
In On Being Certain, neurologist Robert Burton shows that feeling certain—feeling that we know something— is a mental sensation, rather than evidence of fact. An increasing body of evidence suggests that feelings such as certainty stem from primitive areas of the brain and are independent of active, conscious reflection and reasoning. In other words, the feeling of knowing happens to us; we cannot make it happen.
Bringing together cold-edge neuroscience, experimental data, and fascinating anecdotes, Robert Burton explores the inconsistent and sometimes paradoxical relationship between our thoughts and what we really know. Provocative and groundbreaking, On Being Certain challenges what we know (or reckon we know) about the mind, knowledge, and reason.
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On Being Certain ongoing out moderately fascinating but at page 52 I hit a severe snag. When an author gets something I know about so really incorrect (or is being gratuitously nasty) I find I cannot trust what he says about things I don’t know so much about. The comment that B.F. Skinner sought after to raise people like veal is so really absurd I couldn’t end the book and will be returning it to Amazon for a refund.
Rating: 1 / 5
Don’t really know if this book is helpful or not. Too wordy. Couldn’t get into it.
Rating: 2 / 5
This book has some excellent points about our perceptions and how we can misinterpret things and even defending them despite contrary in rank. All well and excellent for people to consider (or learn from a excellent course on critical thought!)
The author seems to go out of his way to slam certain authors theories with small to back it up other than using certain elements of their work hostile to them to try to prove his own points. Anyone can take a fragment of what someone else says and turn it hostile to them or even make it seem they are saying something they are not or spin it out of context from it’s original meaning.
I do like the fact that the author does make you second guess and not blindly judge everything you hear from studies, books and authors but it seemed like he was trying too hard to discredit others even as offering small to refute their work other than his admited disdain for their contributions.
At one top the author criticized someone for doing a study which did not yield the consequences they expected – not taking into account that this happens all the time and is part of the premise of research in the first place and why multiple studies with multiple variables are done all the time! If we hypothesize something and only test it once and give up where would we be with anything technology, business, psychology, science..? If your test doesn’t reveal or yield what you anticipated doesn’t everlastingly mean that it is incorrect. Yes, I know about the implication that the tester might have had biases but if the rational and science are excellent it should not matter. Many successful tests had to go though several iterations before being completed so this nearly seems like the author is trying to bias or influence the reader to his position rather than he himself being objective.
All in all the aim seemed to be excellent in that we should question things and use critical thought before just believing what we see or hear but it seemed more like a private bias of his own about a fantastic many things with small solid evidence of his own to support what he was taking exception to.
Seems that the author feels quite certain about being certain of himself which is a contradiction of the whole purpose of the book and what he/it is trying to say – isn’t it?
Rating: 2 / 5
I everlastingly wondered why not only individuals but entire nations have beliefs that are incorrect, immoral by most standards or simpply stupid (nazism, communism etc.). This book covers individual level of mistaken but deeply held beliefs. Fascinating and helpful.
Rating: 4 / 5
A fun and informative read. Robert Burton informs,presenting factual and ironic detail of the brain an our behavoral responses to external and internal memory. Recomended for students of psychycolgy, marketing and those interest in broadening their understanding of human behavior.
Rating: 4 / 5