Customer Reviews

Wired for Survival: The Rational (and Irrational) Choices We Make, from the Gas Pump to Terrorism

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Margaret Polski, a political economist, with substantial experience in national security issues, got interested in why organizations full of smart people make dumb decisions. This question led her to study how individual human brains work. Contrary to the assumptions of most decision-making methods, she explains, we aren't all that focused on examining facts and reasoning things out. Emotions direct our attention, color our perceptions, change our thinking in response to subtle environmental cues, and impel us toward some judgments and away from others. Mr. Spock is a fictional character, and even in Star Trek he was a rarity from a planet and species different from ours. "We need a model of intuitive choice," she suggests, if we really want to understand how to improve decisions.

She approaches this daunting topic with refreshing candor and open-mindedness. As a result, like the topic, the book tours all over the landscape. We learn about the neural structure of the brain, experiments on how brains work, effects of incentives, and various ways of structuring organizations to correct for individual lapses, ending with recommendations about how to improve such organizational structures. Those who insist on a nicely packaged, linearly flowing presentation, or who simply must view it from within the perspective of any one established discipline, probably will not like this book. There are some annoying leaps from sketchy appreciation of a complex situation to a bold summary of it, especially in the first chapter's discussion of the global economy and various macroeconomic theories. Fortunately, the book gets better as it goes. Perhaps Dr. Polski is unwittingly illustrating one of her main points: we are more likely to trip up in subject areas we think we know well, as we overlook our own blind spots and fail to appreciate what our audience should not be assumed to know. As she gets into the new "this is your brain when discussing money" research (it's called neuroeconomics, at least for now; new fields tend to change names as they grow) and what we can learn from these new studies, her presentation gets both more solid and more interesting. Her concluding recommendations about how we can learn to govern better will not evoke immediate consensus but do merit serious consideration and discussion.

I picked up a hardcopy of this book in Changi Singapore airport and basically read it in one go. The reason I read it in one go is because first of all it is rather short but more importantly it is so appallingly written that I simply could not believe FT Press has actually published this book. In my mind the ever occurring thought that the next chapter must surely compensate for the prior chapter's nonsense made me endure one chapter after another until the last chapter came to an end and I put down the book, dumbstruck as to what abysmal writings manage to get published by reputable publishing houses.

The book's core hypothesis, obfuscated by partisan, belligerent and unfounded statements, sprinkled with a litany of ill fitting classical quotes and a nauseous degree of name dropping, is the following:

Many human decisions and actions are driven by the networks embedded in our bodies and brains [which in turn are a function of our biology and actual and perceived experiences]

This is an interesting hypothesis and, besides the fact that the book is rather short, the only good thing this author has to offer. The book itself fails miserably even in its feeble attempt to put forth a coherent let alone convincing argument or theory as to why the hypothesis holds.

The main line of reasoning, repeated many many times throughout the book, is that humans do not always act as the rational individuals that classical economists or game theorists like to postulate. Yes, anyone with any exposure to any social science field will agree with this statement. But in itself the statement is about as valuable as stating that maps of the world are wrong, as the real world is three dimensional and cannot be portrayed on a piece of paper.

Besides stating the book's core hypothesis it is actually rather difficult to summarize the book, as there is no coherent storyline. The first chapter randomly quotes periods of historical GDP growth rates and makes uninformed statements about "free and liberal countries", of which the author believes there are exactly and no more than three (the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia). The very first chapter itself is already misleading, full of factual errors and seen through an exceptionally narrow minded view. The second chapter is titled "Bits and Pieces", which would have been a more appropriate title for the book itself, seeking to explain the biological foundation of the brain in the wider sense. Subsequent chapters randomly summarize scientific contributions or ramblings of individuals with no apparent linkage besides the fact that they showcase not all decisions are made on the basis of rational computational choices weighing costs and benefits (covering as much ground as Pavlovian dogs, the author's sufferings of jetlag, as well as various US soldiers' experience with hostile foreign environments). Unfortunately this summary cannot be written more coherently as the book itself is in no way coherent.

In terms of style, here are some of the more irritating traits of the author: Shameless name dropping, partisan interpretations and simple factual errors. I won't list them all out as I don't wish to revisit the book, but here are some of the examples that stuck in my mind. Around a dozen times, the author starts a particular section with "as Nobel Laureate XYZ states". Sometimes what follows is vaguely related to what the Nobel Laureate contributed scientifically to earn the Nobel Prize, more often than not what follows is a largely unrelated rambling of the author. The name dropping does not stop here, as silly quotes are liberally scattered throughout the book, in fact the book itself ends on three quotes - one by Basil Henry Liddell Hart, one by Octavio Paz and one by Albert Camus - tellingly the quotes are not related in any manner. With respect to partisan interpretations, suffice to say that there will be many well governed, liberal and economically successful countries that will laugh at the author's statement that only the US, UK and Australia are "inclined to limit government involvement in economic matters". Other countries are labeled "nanny states" and "authoritarian states". According to the author, Keynes is the ideological force behind "nanny states". Apparently Keynes also is a Economics Nobel Laureate and his full name is John Maynerd Keynes [sic]. In reality, the Nobel Prize is never awarded posthumosly, hence Keynes was never awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics that was only introduced in 1969. Admittedly he would have been a strong candidate but that is surely besides the point. His middle name is Maynard.

So where does this leave the reader? Having shut the book, it left me with the personal anguish of wasting time on a book that ought not to have been published in the first place. I did a quick internet check on the author, who appears successful and well educated. I do not know what went wrong here. It is one of the very few books I've ever come across that I would have given the lowest mark in all conceivable categories, be it style, coherence, novelty or insight. In fact even in such basic categories such as factual accuracy or typographical errors this book fails to deliver against any sanitary thresholds.

This book's short length is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, neuroscientist Margaret M. Polski's brevity and clarity make the book an accessible overview of how contemporary cognitive science views thinking and decision making. On the other hand, it is so brief that Polski leapfrogs through a great deal of material very quickly. Some readers may seek a more fully developed explanation of how economic events - like the power struggles between energy producers and energy consumers - relate to research in neuroscience. Issues such as how rationality affects cultural systems like liberal democracy deserve more attention. This lack of connective tissue makes this slender volume pretty episodic, but it also is rich with illustrations drawn from sources ranging from contemporary politics to the classic comedy of Monty Python. The result is enjoyable and useful, if a bit disjointed. getAbstract recommends Polski's book to strategists who are planning for times ahead, to leaders who seek to understand their organizations, and to people who want to understand themselves.