applekern's review against another edition
3.0
Let me start this off by saying, I hope I don‘t pick up another book like this.
There‘s a category - hell, even a whole genre - of men in science that write books that end up exactly like this one. I don‘t care with whom you‘re drinking coffee or who was impressed by talking to you, my friend. I don‘t care for your journey on how you discovered what you believe to be ground-breaking - at least not if 250 out of your 300 pages are about that. Also, spoiler alert, not everyone who reads your book is of the same culture, race and gender as you.
What this specific book lacks is structure and content. The appendix was more informative than the actual content. The author blesses us with 2015 instagram wisdom a la ‚people setting the punctuation for the sentence: a woman(:/,) without her (,) man is nothing’ and ‚the positioning of the word ONLY in the sentence: she told him that she loved him‘ or the amazing philosophic question of what colour does a tennis ball have.
What did I learn? Well, in a side note it was mentioned that extroverts seem to talk more in extremes than introverts. Also, usVSthem, rightVSwrong, fightVSflight are old levers for persuasion. However, 300 pages is a lot considering this is my only key takeaway.
There‘s a category - hell, even a whole genre - of men in science that write books that end up exactly like this one. I don‘t care with whom you‘re drinking coffee or who was impressed by talking to you, my friend. I don‘t care for your journey on how you discovered what you believe to be ground-breaking - at least not if 250 out of your 300 pages are about that. Also, spoiler alert, not everyone who reads your book is of the same culture, race and gender as you.
What this specific book lacks is structure and content. The appendix was more informative than the actual content. The author blesses us with 2015 instagram wisdom a la ‚people setting the punctuation for the sentence: a woman(:/,) without her (,) man is nothing’ and ‚the positioning of the word ONLY in the sentence: she told him that she loved him‘ or the amazing philosophic question of what colour does a tennis ball have.
What did I learn? Well, in a side note it was mentioned that extroverts seem to talk more in extremes than introverts. Also, usVSthem, rightVSwrong, fightVSflight are old levers for persuasion. However, 300 pages is a lot considering this is my only key takeaway.
jacksons_books_and_music's review against another edition
1.0
The author is pro-colonialism, has a pity party for Darren Wilson - murderer of black child Mike Brown, is transphobic especially against two-spirited people, and takes forever not making any real argument. I don’t recommend.
sallymodz123's review against another edition
challenging
informative
reflective
medium-paced
3.5
It was a good book overall, but the postscript left a bad taste in my mouth. I didn’t like his take on covid saving the UK, nor being compared to Hitler. I think overall the insights were good, but the end made me rate it lower than if it had not had the postscript
nietzschesghost's review
4.0
Black and White Thinking: The Burden of a Binary Brain in a Complex World is a groundbreaking and timely book about how evolutionary biology can explain our black-and-white brains, and a lesson in how we can escape the pitfalls of binary thinking. Several million years ago, natural selection equipped us with binary, black-and-white brains. Though the world was arguably simpler back then, it was in many ways much more dangerous. Not coincidentally, the binary brain was highly adept at detecting risk: the ability to analyze threats and respond to changes in the sensory environment--a drop in temperature, the crack of a branch--was essential to our survival as a species. Since then, the world has evolved--but we, for the most part, haven't. Confronted with a panoply of shades of grey, our brains have a tendency to "force quit: " to sort the things we see, hear, and experience into manageable but simplistic categories. We stereotype, pigeon-hole, and, above all, draw lines where in reality there are none. In our modern, interconnected world, it might seem like we are ill-equipped to deal with the challenges we face--that living with a binary brain is like trying to navigate a teeming city centre with a map that shows only highways.
In Black-and-White Thinking, the renowned psychologist Kevin Dutton pulls back the curtains of the mind to reveal a new way of thinking about a problem as old as humanity itself. While our instinct for categorization often leads us astray, encouraging polarization, rigid thinking, and sometimes outright denialism, it is an essential component of the mental machinery we use to make sense of the world. Simply put, unless we perceived our environment as a chessboard, our brains wouldn't be able to play the game. Using the latest advances in psychology, neuroscience, and evolutionary biology, Dutton shows how we can optimize our tendency to categorize and fine-tune our minds to avoid the pitfalls of too little, and too much, complexity. He reveals the enduring importance of three "super categories"--fight or flight, us versus them, and right or wrong--and argues that they remain essential to not only convincing others to change their minds but to changing the world for the better. Black-and-White Thinking is a scientifically informed wake-up call for an era of increasing extremism and a thought-provoking, uplifting guide to training our grey matter to see that grey really does matter.
This is an absolutely fascinating read by a prominent psychologist who usually specialises in psychopathy but this is very much a departure from that topic. It's structured well, is full of fascinating information and you can tell that extensive research went into crafting the entirety of the book. There is so much to intrigue between these pages that will have your cogs whirring and you ruminating on the ideas presented. Although Dr Dutton could easily have explored this subject in such a way that a layperson or someone new to psychology and this field of study would struggle to comprehend, I feel this has been written in a straightforward and easily understandable fashion and is accessible to anyone with an interest in psychology, the psyche and the reality of our behaviour. That said, it is quite a dense read, but I was so engrossed and engaged that I went racing through it rather rapidly. If you wish to know more about the way in which our brains work when confronted with different situations then this is well worth your time; in fact, I'd recommend this highly to anyone interested in psychology. A compelling and eminently readable book. Many thanks to Bantam Press for an ARC.
In Black-and-White Thinking, the renowned psychologist Kevin Dutton pulls back the curtains of the mind to reveal a new way of thinking about a problem as old as humanity itself. While our instinct for categorization often leads us astray, encouraging polarization, rigid thinking, and sometimes outright denialism, it is an essential component of the mental machinery we use to make sense of the world. Simply put, unless we perceived our environment as a chessboard, our brains wouldn't be able to play the game. Using the latest advances in psychology, neuroscience, and evolutionary biology, Dutton shows how we can optimize our tendency to categorize and fine-tune our minds to avoid the pitfalls of too little, and too much, complexity. He reveals the enduring importance of three "super categories"--fight or flight, us versus them, and right or wrong--and argues that they remain essential to not only convincing others to change their minds but to changing the world for the better. Black-and-White Thinking is a scientifically informed wake-up call for an era of increasing extremism and a thought-provoking, uplifting guide to training our grey matter to see that grey really does matter.
This is an absolutely fascinating read by a prominent psychologist who usually specialises in psychopathy but this is very much a departure from that topic. It's structured well, is full of fascinating information and you can tell that extensive research went into crafting the entirety of the book. There is so much to intrigue between these pages that will have your cogs whirring and you ruminating on the ideas presented. Although Dr Dutton could easily have explored this subject in such a way that a layperson or someone new to psychology and this field of study would struggle to comprehend, I feel this has been written in a straightforward and easily understandable fashion and is accessible to anyone with an interest in psychology, the psyche and the reality of our behaviour. That said, it is quite a dense read, but I was so engrossed and engaged that I went racing through it rather rapidly. If you wish to know more about the way in which our brains work when confronted with different situations then this is well worth your time; in fact, I'd recommend this highly to anyone interested in psychology. A compelling and eminently readable book. Many thanks to Bantam Press for an ARC.
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