Brain Tricks: Coping with Your Defective Brain [Paperback]

David L. Weiner (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1995

"Brain Tricks" probes what Weiner calls the "dark side" of the brain - raw animal instincts rooted in our primitive past when survival, mating, and taming the environment required instant, uncritical, and wholly self-centred decision making. Though modified by early childhood conditioning, our primitive thought patterns continue to this day. Our brain ignores the rituals and rules of civilised society as we overreact to sudden situations, indulge in strong emotions and prejudice, and try to manipulate others. When we succumb to our dark side, "brain tricks" trouble is not far off.We alienate friends and lovers, quarrel with our bosses, become obsessed with possessions, commit murder, and start wars. In clear, easy to understand language, Weiner dramatises "the genetic and conditioned programming that can lead us into chaos." Using well-developed vignettes featuring friends, lovers, business and professional associates, he provides an inviting vehicle for discussing our hard-to-resist tendencies to exert power over others, indulge in greed, succumb to jealousy and rage, and invent scapegoats to mask our own faults.

Editorial Reviews

From Scientific American

Offers tricks for coaxing the old brain hard drive into processing our new brain software. It's a good read.

From The New Yorker

...says a lot about how you respond to the strong drives that influence us from our emotional, impulsive side of the brain, versus the thoughtful, analytical side.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 358 pages
• Publisher: Prometheus Books (March 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0879759895
• ISBN-13: 978-0879759896
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,831,145 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars this is a very good book...., January 26, 2005

By 

J. Miller "TT" (NC) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Brain Tricks: Coping with Your Defective Brain (Paperback)

and I would recommend it to anyone who is interested in psychological/philosophical aspects. I have to admit that there are some extreme descriptions and the langague are sometimes not very appropriate. Very opne-minded people welcome (Parental advise! or PG-13). But overall, I have learnt a great deal from that book that makes me think...I mean, really think a whole lot different about our world. I am trying to translate this book into my mother langague, and even though it needs sometimes to complete, I am so thrilled at the idea that I help speading these thoughts.

8 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Jabs at other beleifs from behind a cloak of impartiality., January 7, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Brain Tricks: Coping with Your Defective Brain (Paperback)

Mr. Weiner structured the book in a very understandable way, allowing for people of different learning styles to easily take away information. The first twenty-two chapters of the book began with a dramatized discussion of the point he was attempting to make and was then followed up with a solid no-nonsense explanation in usually a page or two. I found the no-nonsense descriptions of his ideas more appealing for a number of reasons. The first was because the author often made statements about religion (specifically Christianity) in the dialogs between his characters, so I was less offended by the straight explanations. I am also a very focused learner so trying to draw at the point in a drawn out conversation can become cumbersome to me. I am much better at learning when it is cut and dry rather than long and winding. The final chapters of the book (chapters twenty-three through twenty-eight) again used discussion at times, but Mr. Weiner's theories on using rationality to overcome what he calls "brain tricks" took up the majority of these chapters. Mr. Weiner stated rationality is a tool for use in overcoming our "six spindle programs." He defines these programs as purpose, social, power, sexual, territorial, and security. The author also describes how each of these programs can be active on different levels depending on the individual and the current environment that individual is in. Spindle programs can be active on seven different "speeds:" barely discernable, ultra-low, low, average, high, ultra-high, and off the scale. Mr. Weiner then follows up by giving an example of each of the programs at each of the seven speeds, in theory allowing the reader to discern where they fall on his Numeric Scale.
In chapter twenty-two the author discusses a "Society of Nothing" number scale. This scale is a rough number representation of our humility:
A first-level Nothing is someone who doesn't know they are nothing. The worst kind of person. A second-level Nothing actually thinks it is possible he or she might be a nothing. A fourth-level believes it. A fifth-level knows it. And a sixth-level Nothing absolutely knows it for a fact. (281)
Using this scale and the levels of our six spindle programs, the author suggests the reader will be able to better control his or her irrational emotional reactions to certain things our brain "tricks" us into getting into a fluster about. In his last chapters, Mr. Weiner describes this process in full.
From the last few chapters of the book I was able to take away some knowledge that I may find useful in the future. Law enforcement is a stressful and emotionally demanding career and inevitably I will face situations where I may be prone to react in an irrational manner. Mr. Weiner's theories on how to focus on making a more rational decision and leaving emotion out of a decision process will be most helpful at times during my career. However, the author seemed to think that emotions were a negative characteristic of humans, which is an obvious undertone of any true rationalist, according to whom emotions are all widely irrational. I believe that emotions are a functional characteristic of humanity, and any attempt to remove them is to deny a portion of our humanity.
I found Brain Tricks to be an interesting book that forced me think; however, I must first say that numerous times statements made by the author offended me. I am a devout Christian and in the first chapters of the book the author makes several derogatory comments blindly aimed at Judeo-Christian beliefs, going so far as to call Jesus Christ a "big-time sperm winner" (35). All these statements are made within the very same chapters asking the reader to keep an open mind and realize that anything is possible. The author also in a number of places makes statements so as to influence the reader towards his particular view of the bottom line truth, while still trying to maintain that anything is possible and could be the truth. I also found it hard at times to overlook the fact that Mr. Weiner is discussing a topic that even he states no scientist has even a remote understanding of. In the very first chapter of the book, Mr. Weiner makes it clear that we are nowhere near understanding the workings of the human brain, however through the book Mr. Weiner talks about the brain as though he were an expert. Personally, I would not allow a person who has no understanding of the workings of the engine in my car to diagnose what is wrong with it, yet it seems to be this is exactly what Mr. Weiner does throughout his book. Since Mr. Weiner's perspective is widely based on opinion and beliefs, I see no reason as to why it should be held as more feasible than any other set of opinions and beliefs. Through my reading, I sense that Mr. Weiner both believes rationality is more feasible than other systems of beliefs and wishes the reader to believe the same, yet he encourages them to realize that anything could be possible. It frustrates me when someone is obviously biased to a system of beliefs and attempts to discuss it with me as though they were not biased. I feel this is exactly what Mr. Weiner has done in his book Brain Tricks. He wraps his opinions in a cloak of un-biased statements, yet throws jabs at other systems of beliefs from inside this cloak.
I cannot say that I overly enjoyed reading the book Brain Tricks by David L. Weiner. I would therefore not recommend this book to people I know to have the same system of beliefs as myself. I would however recommend it to anyone who subscribed to a rationalist point of view. In the end, the fact that Mr. Weiner contradicts his own request for the reader to be open-minded seriously detracts from my opinion of the book.

6 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Brain Tricks : Coping With Your Defective Brain, April 23, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Brain Tricks: Coping with Your Defective Brain (Paperback)

I found this a very difficult book to keep motivated to keep reading. It is written more for the person that deals with various brain studies.