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| Author: Gary Marcus
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Co
Category: Book
List Price: $24.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:  64 reviews
Sales Rank: 5919
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:
Imperfect and Loving Being So! June 19, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Let me start by saying that Gary Marcus has written a highly engaging and readable analysis of the human mind. Kluge is accessible to all readers. One benefit of this book first that it's not filled with endless jargon and technical stuff that would put-off an average reader. It is well written and humorous. If I were to rate it strictly on it's quality of writing, it would be closer to a 5 star book. The author's voice and sense of humor are apparent throughout and make this an enjoyable read. The descriptions of how our mind actually works are insightful and enlightening. As I read this book it filled me with pictures of the cluttery and sometimes overlooked parts of my own mind. It's hard not to laugh aloud when reading how our memory works (and more often does not work), how our minds form belief, and the ways in which we come to making choices day in and day out. If I could divorce these fine qualities from some of the beliefs of the author it would make this book one of my favorites.
All of that aside, I do have several fundamental differences with the central arguments of this book. These differences weren't hard to locate as they slapped me in the face very early on and never let go of me. At the very beginning of the text Marcus states, "Are human beings "noble in reason" and "infinite in faculty" as William Shakespeare famously wrote? Perfect, "in God's image", as some biblical scholars have asserted? Hardly." On this foundation Gary Marcus builds his case for the evolutionary development of the mind. My biggest disagreement with this idea is that for all the logic and scientific backing the author espouses throughout the book, this very argument is not so logical. When the author expresses a belief that human minds created by a perfect designer would in-turn be perfect as well, is a fairly short-sighted one. In fact it is the slight imperfections and quizzical shortcomings of a masterpiece that make it something worth viewing again and again. I can't help but think of Davinci's Mona Lisa. For centuries people have questioned at the expression on her face. It is the fact we are not sure if she's ready to smile? Or ready to laugh? Or ready to sneeze?... These mysteries and apparent short-coming fill us with wonder again and again. When we think of the one's we love it is more often the little quirks and foibles that draw us to them than some type of perfect image. Perfection definitely loses it's shine through the ever marching passage of time, while the everyday beauty of normal, "flawed" people holds us and keeps us coming back for more again and again. To say that imperfection in a product denies the presence of a "producer" or craftsman or artisan is a faulty argument.
Unfortunately I don't blindly accept the popular arguments of evolution. To me it takes much more faith to accept that all the beauty and wonder and complexity of this world happened by random chance, than to reach out and accept by faith that we were created by an infinite, loving creator. Every reaction has and equal and opposite action. There are no unmoved movers out there. To me imperfection in a creation is a more sure sign of the genius in the creator than perfection would ever be.
The mind is a beautiful thing even in it's randomness and imperfection. I'm always amazed as my brain and those of my young students make connections and form new learning in their fertile minds. To pass this off as merely chemical would be foolhardy. As I read this book over and over again a hollow argument rang. I cannot in good faith say the book was bad, as it was not. I did enjoy the many illustrations of human thought, choice, faith, and reason. But don't take all the arguments posited there as proof-positive of anything... Enjoy the work of art, even in it's imperfections. Marcus is a master wordsmith and you'll surely enjoy his thoughts.
Good Casual Read June 19, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I liked KLUGE, and not only because it introduced a new word to my vocabulary :-).
KLUGE is a casual book on a fascinating topic. Don't pick this up expecting deep science of the human mind; instead, expect an interesting perspective on how the mind works, supported by some very fascinating and very weird bits of research (some of the studies the author cites floored me). People who know a lot about the human brain and how it works (psychologists, say) might find this book too light or too simple in its points. For the rest of us, though, this bok points out some things we all already suspected about ourselves and our fellow humans.
You'll be thinking more about the way you think when you're done.
 too casual June 18, 2008
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
This book has an interesting and appealing premise, which is that many aspects of human behavior, language, and thought can best be understood if we regard the brain as a barely-adapted Rube Goldberg contraption.
In support of this there are a number of interesting anecdotes, quotations, and results from psychology and behavioral economics.
However none of the argumentation is very deep. There are endnotes and references, but the lay reader doesn't know how much confidence to give any particular claim, and I only remember one section (about whether mental illness confers any adaptive advantage) that mentions other viewpoints or explanations.
The result is that all the evolutionary explanations offered might as well be just what Creationists claim they are -- "just so stories". Writing popular science doesn't reduce a scientist's obligation to be scientific, especially when evolution is on the table.
 I'm all kluged up June 17, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
A kluge is a slapdash solution to an engineering problem -- a duct-tape stopgap that gets the job done, but just barely. MacGyver specialized in kluges.
Gary Marcus thinks your brain is a kluge. (Mine, too: We all have a prefrontal cortex piled on top of a primitive hindbrain. The thinking process that emerges isn't always pretty.)
"When I can do something stupid even as I know at the time that it's stupid," Marcus writes, "it seems clear that my brain is a patchwork of multiple systems working in conflict. Evolution built the ancestral reflexive system first and evolved systems for rational deliberation second." We're all 98 percent chimpanzee, he says, so "the vast majority of our genetic material evolved in the context of creatures who didn't have language, didn't have culture, and didn't reason deliberately."
In his chapter on memory -- there are also sections on how we think (not clearly), make decisions (not wisely), communicate (ambiguously) and pursue happiness (in truly odd ways) -- Marcus illustrates his book's subtitle, "The Haphazard Construction of the Human Mind." He differentiates between what he calls contextual memory and "postal code" memory. Evolution rewarded the guy walking through the forest who looked down, saw claws, heard a growl and ran for his life; the guy who waited for the stripes and teeth and whiskers before arriving at a conclusion ("Tiger!") is the guy who got eaten.
Marcus dances with atheists -- humans are both rational and irrational, and therefore, he seems to believe, there is no God -- but he's right to scoff at Americans who, when it comes to evolution, would prefer not to be confused with the facts. And he writes entertainingly, with jokes and pop culture references thrown in among all those revealing psychological studies. He's the kind of psych professor you wish you'd had in college.
The way our primitive and more sophisticated brain parts interact may be all kluged up, but Marcus offers a remedy: More emphasis in our daily lives on techniques of critical thinking: considering alternative theories, remembering that correlation and causation aren't the same, valuing scientific proofs over mere anecdotes. Our schools don't teach that enough, he says. But then our schools, like our brains, are built like kluges.
Non-Psychologists review June 16, 2008
As a non-psychologist interested in the limits to human potential I found this book about our imperfect brains readable, at times profound and fairly entertaining. At times it took a bit of disciplne to read, there may be a problem with our tendancy to see ourselves through rose tinted glasses (which he discusses) and really enjoying a book on this subject(I thought it was intersting New Scientist said it was "depressing"). But one pleasant surprise was that it made me more tolerant and understanding of people, what may seem like deliberate immorality may in fact be the result of the messy brain we have to work with.
I'm sure there are a lot of other weird things about our minds he didn't mention because he is mainly interested in what has been proven with experiments, he does mention egocentricity but narcissism (arguably)the worst mental epidemic of our age, wasn't mentioned(as far as my fuzzy brain can recall). But I think the point of the book is so important and because it is well argued I recommend it.
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