# Anyone read "The Believing Brain"?



## JFS (Jul 28, 2011)

Was reviewed in the WSJ a day or so ago.  Looked interesting.  The review had parts that remind me of our discussion here.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303365804576432011569887724.html

In the book, he brilliantly lays out what modern cognitive research has to tell us about his subject—namely, that our brains are "belief engines" that naturally "look for and find patterns" and then infuse them with meaning. These meaningful patterns form beliefs that shape our understanding of reality. Our brains tend to seek out information that confirms our beliefs, ignoring information that contradicts them. Mr. Shermer calls this "belief-dependent reality." The well-worn phrase "seeing is believing" has it backward: Our believing dictates what we're seeing.

Mr. Shermer marshals an impressive array of evidence from game theory, neuroscience and evolutionary psychology. A human ancestor hears a rustle in the grass. Is it the wind or a lion? If he assumes it's the wind and the rustling turns out to be a lion, then he's not an ancestor anymore. Since early man had only a split second to make such decisions, Mr. Shermer says, we are descendants of ancestors whose "default position is to assume that all patterns are real; that is, assume that all rustles in the grass are dangerous predators and not the wind."

...

"As a back-of-the-envelope calculation within an order-of-magnitude accuracy, we can safely say that over the past ten thousand years of history humans have created about ten thousand different religions and about one thousand gods," Mr. Shermer writes. He lists more than a dozen gods, from Amon Ra to Zeus, and wonders how one of them can be true and the rest false. "As skeptics like to say, everyone is an atheist about these gods; some of us just go one god further."

....

As for his own political bias, Mr. Shermer says that he's "a fiscally conservative civil libertarian." He is a fan of old-style liberalism, as in liberality of outlook, and cites "The Science of Liberty" author Timothy Ferris's splendid formulation: "Liberalism and science are methods, not ideologies." The "scientific solution to the political problem of oppressive governments," Mr. Shermer says, "is the tried-and-true method of spreading liberal democracy and market capitalism through the open exchange of information, products, and services across porous economic borders."


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## ambush80 (Jul 29, 2011)

JFS said:


> Was reviewed in the WSJ a day or so ago.  Looked interesting.  The review had parts that remind me of our discussion here.
> 
> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303365804576432011569887724.html
> 
> ...




Isn't glaringly obvious that God made us that way?


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## JFS (Jul 29, 2011)

ambush80 said:


> Isn't glaringly obvious that God made us that way?




Doh! 

You're right.  Sorry, my bad.


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