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| Kluge: The Haphazard Construction of the Human Mind | 
| Author: Gary Marcus
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Co
Category: Book
List Price: $24.00
Buy New: $11.49
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Avg. Customer Rating:  66 reviews
Sales Rank: 9745
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 224
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 8.3 x 5.8 x 0.9
ISBN: 0618879641
Dewey Decimal Number: 153
EAN: 9780618879649
ASIN: 0618879641
Publication Date: April 16, 2008
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| Customer Reviews:
 A fun book for the right audience January 28, 2008
2 out of 5 found this review helpful
I like to read books on math and physics, even though I don't have a strong background in either. Sometimes I'll read a review scorning some book in that subject area for being lightweight and lacking in new information, and I'll find myself thinking that it was just right for me.
I've found myself on the other side of that fence here. Marcus's book is pleasant and well-written, but it really contains nothing new. If you took Psych 101 and high school biology, and have read the papers since, you will recognize just about all the anecdotes that make up the bulk of this book. "Ah, yes," you'll find yourself thinking, "I read that in The Wall Street Journal -- heard that one on NPR. There's Psych 101 again..."
However, it might be that you only took courses in engineering, and have avoided all popular science ever since you got out of school. In that case, you will find this book an enjoyable introduction to the more amusing bits of psychology.
Marcus is arguing that the brain works in ways that suggest that it is the product of evolution. I have no quibble with that, though I do find myself unable to share Marcus's apparent belief that computers work better than human brains. Their ability to do quick calculations is dwarfed, for me, by things like music, literature, and even compassion. Marcus doesn't really support that belief, though; he seems to feel that it is obvious.
He repeatedly emphasizes that the brain is too flawed to be the result of design, and indeed that may be his main point. If so, it is unlikely to convince creationists.
However, this book is a fun read. I enjoyed being reminded of some things I hadn't thought of since my undergraduate days, and Marcus seems to be a nice guy. I will be looking out some of his other works, and hoping that they are more substantial than this one.
Data deluge-the many evolutionary glitches of the human brain January 28, 2008
2 out of 5 found this review helpful
Ever wondered why you can't remember the contents of your last meal, the location of your car, or where you put those darn keys? The cause is the way the brain uses context and other clues to retrieve information. Evolution-related glitches of the brain have caused a host of problems for humans. And author Gary Marcus has does an excellent job of explaining them. But the book is not without faults: (1) The choice of subject for certain chapters defies logic. It is true that the English language, being made up of a mixture of other languages, doesn't make much sense, but many other languages do. (2) Why spend so much time explaining belief, when, as with other books covering the topic, like god is not Great by Christopher Hitchens and The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, it's doubtful that anyone will be swayed by the reasoning. (3) Personal tidbits from an author's life typically add value (Kluge included), but the footnotes regarding his wife's dog in Choice and his personal views on homosexuality in Pleasure are just plain too much information. (4) A fair amount of the research data provided, especially in the Memory and the Choice chapters, has been published elsewhere and will likely be familiar to many. (5) Lastly, haters of self-help books beware. This otherwise decent book ends with 13 of the dreaded how-tos, listed as "suggestions." Thankfully, they fill fewer than ten pages.
While Kluge contains much in the way of everyman-friendly information on the brain and the faults acquired during the evolutionary process, most of it is not revolutionary. Better, broader science-minded reading: The Best Science and Nature Writing 2007 by Richard Preston and Tim Folger and The Best Science Writing 2007 by Gina Kolata and Jesse Cohen.
 A thinking man's in-flight read January 27, 2008
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
The core idea of Kluge is this: the process of evolution is not directed towards optimal outcomes (in absolute terms), but rather towards optimized outcomes (within the innumerable constraints that an organism's prior genetic history imposes). It is for this reason -- as Marcus notes -- that the human body is supported by only a single relatively weak and easily compromised spine; and that our eyes have blind spots. By analogy, Marcus asserts, our brains are inherently sub-optimal, ill-suited to perform certain tasks, fraught with 'design errors'. Marcus makes a very strong case for this assertion, drawing on a variety of experiments and empirical findings in the fields of psychology and (psycho-)linguistics. Throughout, he discusses sub-optimal cognitive processes in terms of conflict between two layers of cognitive capacity (which, neuro-scientists have determined, are centered largely in distinct areas of the brain): an instinctual/reflexive capacity and a deliberative one. Though Kluge is not an academic treatment, it is nonetheless quite incisive, and surprisingly entertaining. Repeated references to websites invite the reader to explore topics further (and more readily than they otherwise might through the extant literature). I was particularly interested in and swayed by Marcus' criticisms of evolutionary psychology and, in general, of those who would seek to explain or defend puzzling features of the mind (mental illness, gullibility, susceptibility to prejudice, etc.) as -- in their own right -- positive adaptations. Having read Kluge, I am quite interested in pursuing this subject matter further. Kudos to Marcus!
An elegant analysis of our inelegant minds January 26, 2008
42 out of 47 found this review helpful
In "Kluge," psychologist Gary Marcus looks to the many and varied foibles, inconsistencies, and inaccuracies of the human mind and concludes that our brains are not, in fact, models of brilliance and efficiency, but are rather cobbled-together systems, designed for one purpose and pressed into action for another - the classic definition of a kluge.
The most famous kluge is probably the case of the carbon scrubbers on the ill-fated Apollo 13 mission. Crunched for time, engineers managed to create a system out of duct tape and socks (seriously) that worked adequately enough to clean the air on the space module- even though none of the materials they used were designed for, or optimal for, the job at hand. The result was ugly and inefficient - but it kept the astronauts alive. Likewise, Marcus argues, evolution has endowed humans with a hodgepodge of genetic material - the DNA equivalent of duct tape - with which to build all the sophisticated systems that supposedly set us apart from other creatures, like language, memory, and reason. The result is, for example in the case of language, "a vocal apparatus more byzantine than a bagpipe made up entirely of pipe cleaners and cardboard dowels."
It's delightful metaphors like this that make "Kluge" such an entertaining read. Marcus is a talented writer as well as an insightful psychologist, and what emerges from his theory is both fascinating and well-argued. In each chapter, he looks at one aspect of the human mind whose fallacies he traces to the kluge effect. Our tendency to make irrational choices, for instance, isn't necessarily the case of a single, poorly designed system. Rather, it's caused by two separate systems in conflict - our older, more primitive hindbrain, and our evolutionarily newer, deliberate forebrain. Each system on its own is pretty good at what it's designed to do, whether reacting from instinct or reasoning through logic. It's when the multiple layers of our brains try to work together that we get breakdowns and inconsistencies - like choosing the transient pleasure of chocolate cake over the deliberate, long-term goal of losing weight.
Marcus does a great job selling his theory. I heard echoes of Bill Bryson and Matt Ridley in his conversational, often humorous writing style. It's clear that Marcus doesn't just study the human mind; he loves it for the very quirks and eccentricities that define it. His book has a clear thesis - that the kluge effect is further proof of the theory of evolution - but I wish he had done a bit more to clearly connect his thesis to the evidence he provides. Still, I understand it's a fine line to walk, and by keeping the book slim and streamlined he's made for a much better read. Anyone interested in human psychology or evolution will greatly enjoy this well-written, well-researched account of "Haphazard Construction of the Human Mind."
Good companion piece to Birth of the Mind January 26, 2008
0 out of 4 found this review helpful
Gary Marcus' The Birth of the Mind is a very well-done look at the way the mind works and how it evolved. There's a lot of hard science--DNA comparisons as well as experiments in which, for example, the point where the neural path from the eye to the brain was severed and moved in a salamander. Could the brain somehow re-establish a neural connection to that part of the brain that processed visual information? The answer was yes. That book also compared areas of the human brain to that of other creatures to show how particular areas of the brain evolve.
Kluge, by comparison, is not a hard-science book. The experiments are psychological. For example--if you have two pairs of shoes that don't fit (both pairs the same size), and one pair is cheap and the other expensive, people keep the expensive pair around much longer in the hope that maybe they might be able to fit. Rational? No. Another experiment had subjects looking at the photographs of two men--one attractive, the other not as attractive. The subjects were much more prone to attribute evil deeds to the less attractive man. Other experments involve the processing, or mis-processing of language. The overall conclusion is that while the human mind works, it often or usually does so in an inefficient and irrational manner. Marcus discusses the short sentence "people people left left" and why our minds have great difficulty with such a four-word sentence.
I have some problems here. The sentence above is difficult for us. Is this an inherent problem? Or is it part of the language we know? Are there languages that avoid ambiguity, or at least have much less possibility for it? If the answer to that question is "yes", then the problem seems to lie more in the way we learn and how we organize our thoughts, and it is not an inherent difficulty. Could we (ignoring ethical questions) take newborn infants and raise them in a fashion so that their minds would be organized differently and be less kluged? That's something I wondered about as I read the book. Birth of the Mind describes a famous experiment in which rats raised in a "rich" environment developed permanent and significant differences in their brains compared to rats raised in a bland environment.
So what we have is a kluge--but it may not be inherently that way. If you read Kluge, also read Birth of the Mind.
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