Customer Reviews

Why Choose This Book?: How We Make Decisions

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is a informative book on decision making by the human brain. The author is a leader in this field who has made several notable contributions to the literature. Montague's basic theme is that convergence of experiments from and perspectives of several different disciplines, including neurophysiology, psychology, economics, and computer science, is generating considerable insight into human decision making and goal directed behaviors. I'm familiar with some of the primary literature in this area and I find that Montague does a good job of presenting the facts. Quite a bit of the discussion reflects Montague's research interests.
Montague begins in a somewhat surprising place, the efficiency of the brain. Most people who have thought about this issue tend to regard the brain as something of a kludge; slow, inefficient, and jerry-rigged by evolutionary compromises. Montague argues well that this impression is not correct. Rapid processing can be purchased only at the cost of high energy expenditure. Montague argues that proportional to energy expenditure, mammalian brains are remarkably efficient.
Montague then moves on to describe some of the most impressive recent results in neuroscience; the discovery of the role of dopamine signaling in reinforcement learning. This discovery represented a remarkable convergence of theory and experimental results. Montague explains this phenomenon well and discusses how this phylogenetically ancient mechanism emerged to respond to basic rewards and was probably coopted to serve more general functions. Montague discusses the closely related topic of valuation and its probable mechanisms and functional circuitry, then concludes with some more speculative discussions of learning and aspects of social behavior including altruism.
A recurrent theme of the book is the power of formal computational models to guide experiments and explain phenomena.
While Montague is a generally clear writer, this book has some real defects as a general introduction. Montague relies almost entirely on written descriptions of the science. Well designed figures would have greatly enhanced understanding of the science. Similarly, some explanations of the methods used would have enhanced this book. Finally, its surprising that someone so enthusiastic about formal modeling produces a book without a single, even very simple, equation. Very simple equations often capture much more information than many lines of text.

This is an excellent account of various closely related concepts in modern computational neuroscience, communicating to non-mathematical readers key theories such as predictive error signals and the dopamine system, temporal difference theory, cognitive control, neuroeconomics etc, testable in humans using behavioural and neuroimaging methods. As a philosopher observed, this approach hog-ties old philosophical dogmas. Indeed its a valuable antidote to philosophy, and unlike millennia of philosophical effort (including Satre), this approach is making very active progress. Highly recommended.

In a mostly engaging technical look at the decision making mechanisms within the human mind and its evolution, Montague explores what the characteristics of an efficient computational machine are, primarily within the confines of Turing's 'philosophy'. Specifically, the book explains the how mind evolves through interactions and the notions of how we frame the value of choices available to us and how we assign costs to these choices. Covering disparate topics such as computational theory of mind, neuromodulatory systems, dopamine delivery, Redish's model, etc., the author paints a detailed picture of the various critical research directions that have enables us to understand the functioning of the human mind.

The book is not an easy-read in terms of the depth of the material covered (no reputable author would try to dumb this material down to a Cliff's note version). The discussion is mostly engaging, though sometimes, the topics change quite abruptly. The chapters do not necessarily seem to be seamlessly transitioned, and it would have served the reader, if the author summarized the main observations more clearly in each chapter. Despite these minor irritations, the book is a treasure trove for anyone interested in this field, though may not be sufficient for a serious student in this field. The end notes are well organized and detailed. An excellent read for a patient, curious reader. 4.5 stars

Some books are important for the discussions they start.

Although probably Montague himself would admit that many of his insights appeared in earlier (and maybe even better) works, what is novel here is a popularized work that seriously discusses human consciousness in connection with Turing reasoning.

For those not up on their Allan Turing, he was one of the Betchly Park genuises who helped the allies beat the Germans by decoding enigma during World War II. When not decoding enigma, Turing (himself an enigma) devoted attention to the nature of human imagination and cognition.

And according to Turing, the solution for the problem dogging centuries of philosophers was easy. Decision making ultimately could be resolved as the discrete repetitive choice of one option over another. To take a somewhat easy example, let's solve 1 minus 0. First you take a one then you remove zero from it and you get a solution. Turing reasoned that using something called Boolian algebra that the one and the zero could be rendered as binary choices and thereby made part of a larger algorithm for problem solving.

What Montague does in his book is to marry Turing decision making with human emotion to add an additional ingredient to all human decisions...that is, an emotional component which explains our (all too often) propensities toward illogic.

In this way (and this is the significant thing Montague does), Montague convincingly makes the argument that though emotionally grounded, human decision making remains nonetheless binary and therefore subject to algorithmic tracking.

This book covers, and connects, insights from computer science, physics, evolutionary psychology and biology, psychology, economics, and of course neuroscience. In addition to the particular insights from the different fields, the connections Montague draws between them help us understand what the brain attempts to achieve and how it goes about doing so (taking us with him).

The last part of the book describes in more detail a few amazing fMRI experiments, what was learned from them, and their larger implications.

This is not a particularly easy read because it is not repartitions, and it covers a lot of ground, ideas, and findings. But, it is defiantly a fascinating window into this new domain of science.

I really enjoyed this book, because I am interested in the brain and why we make decisions. Overall it used language I could understand, and made great connections between the anatomy of the brain and the structure of the mind. I would recommend it for anyone who is interested in why we choose what we do and what the brain has to do with it.

This book may be fine for someone who does not know much about information theory or standard cognitive psychology, but it was disappointing for me, because Montague is a talented neuroscientist with some great discoveries under his belt, and I wanted a description of the neuroscience "value added." Instead, it is a very general book for the novice, and very rarely addresses what is really new--the neuroscientific evidence on how brains synthesize diverse pieces of information to come to a single decision.

There is a way to be both popular, highly informative, and accurate. Montague has not found the way. He has no qualms about saying things that are either obviously false. Obvious: "So choice is about relative value, and relative valuation arose because life runs on batteries, energy is limited, and there's no free lunch." (p. 225) Obviously false: "Efficiency = the best long-term returns from the least immediate investment." (p. 18). Indeed, so much of what he says in this book is obvious that I often found myself bored and distracted.

On page 103, Montague describes the neural mechanism that effects the integration of disparate signals concerning the value of various actions. However, there is absolutely no attempt to describe the neural processes involved. I understand that the biochemistry of the brain is complex, but it would still be nice to have a chapter on basic brain structure, a second on signaling, etc. The material in this section should be heavily diagramed, and perhaps even a simple equation or two illustrating the real neural processes involved in choice. Montague is obviously afraid that if he goes to deeply in the material, he will lose the reader, or the reader's attention. But, this is not necessarily the case. It is possible to be accurate, deep, and challenging without losing the lay reader.

Instead of doing what he knows best, Montague touches lightly on a half a dozen subjects far from his expertise, and he sometimes makes serious mistakes. Thus, his treatment of fairness in the ultimatum game (chapter 6) explains that humans value fairness because our hunter-gatherer forbears lived in societies characterized by tit-for-tat, so all cooperation was "iterated exchange." Now, there is a large literature on the moral structure of early human societies, and while this is one view of the situation, is contradicted by many papers and books written in the past fifteen years. Personally, I think it is dead wrong.

The author is an intellectual's intellectual as regards neuropsychology, neurology, and the like. If some other readers couldn't understand it, how much science did they have in college? Do they have an IQ high enough to appreciate this book? All books aren't for everyone.

That said, the author has readable style, entertaining, even. He knows neurology and he knows computer science so that he can draw parallels between the two. This is not a highly technical work that only an engineer or MD might grasp, but if you know a little about how the brain functions and about computers, it won't hurt you.

What survives is what has value attached to it. There is a Darwinian beast within us which rigorously selects for those mental aspects which help us to survive. We don't have the resources to pay equal attention to every thought, every memory. So they are tagged with value as regards their emotional content, survival value, and so on.

I think this is a fascinating book that people interested in the brain/mind will find worthwhile reading. He is at the cutting edge of theory in these areas as a fellow at Princeton's Institute for Advanced Studies, the place Einstein made famous.

Montague makes connections in this book that I have not read elsewhere. He postulates that the drive to conserve energy -- to be efficient -- is what drives all living things. He then carries this notion into brain science. He presents that we compress and encode information as a means for being efficient. That is at once extraordinarily helpful and a source of bad decisions. In order for "efficient" concepts to have purposeful import in an external, physical reality, they have to be decoded. I love the example he gives of printing instructions for, and a flat-relief model of, origami. The information is there to create a paper crane, let's say. But, when given to his dog, he just licks it and walks away. It takes more than a mere conveyance of information. It takes an ability to model that information. Montague also goes on an interesting exposition of how goals set up by the human brain can veto more logical and sound goals. Neurochemically, dopamine can become associated with some ideas. Therefore, their pursuit takes high priority. The Heaven's Gate cult demonstrates that this is not always a good thing. In fact, there are so many things going on which contaminate one's ability to make sound decisions and Montague goes deeply into some of them. It is a fascinating journey. But, by the end of the book, I'm not sure that I was left with anything other than the idea that we are all more or less sleepwalking. Actually, that was the reason why I picked up the book. It's more of a scientific explanation as to why people make stupid decisions.

I am only part way through this book but I am so excited by it that I've already had to get googling to find out more about the worlds it is beginning to uncover. As someone just starting to study science seriously, it has helped me find what I think might be my field - a convergence of biochemistry, computation, and economics that could lead us to create truly intelligent machines.