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Kluge: The Haphazard Evolution of the Human Mind Paperback – Bargain Price, April 7, 2009

by Gary Marcus (Author)

67 customer reviews

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How is it that we can recognize photos from our high school yearbook decades later, but cannot remember what we ate for breakfast yesterday? And why are we inclined to buy more cans of soup if the sign says "LIMIT 12 PER CUSTOMER" rather than "LIMIT 4 PER CUSTOMER?" In Kluge, Gary Marcus argues convincingly that our minds are not as elegantly designed as we may believe. The imperfections result from a haphazard evolutionary process that often proceeds by piling new systems on top of old ones—and those systems don’t always work well together. The end product is a "kluge," a clumsy, cobbled-together contraption. Taking us on a tour of the essential areas of human experience—memory, belief, decision making, language, and happiness—Marcus unveils a fundamentally new way of looking at the evolution of the human mind and simultaneously sheds light on some of the most mysterious aspects of human nature.

Editorial Reviews

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"Marcus's emphasis on the peculiar quirks of our minds -- or odd decisions and weird interpretations -- makes for a fascinating, self-referential read...Marcus's book makes "kluge" an indispensable term for explaining the human mind." (Seed )

"Invigorating fun...inspired, one of those unexpected analogies that help us look at everything afresh." (New York Times Book Review )

"A shot across the bow of intelligent design." (Kirkus Reviews )

About the Author

Gary Marcus is a professor of psychology at New York University and director of the NYU Infant Language Learning Center. Marcus received his Ph.D. at age twenty-three from MIT, where he was mentored by Steven Pinker. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Newsday, the Los Angeles Times, and other major publications. He lives in New York.

Paperback: 208 pages
Publisher: Mariner Books; Reprint edition (April 7, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 054723824X
ASIN: B002ECETZY
Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.2 x 0.6 inches
Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 67 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,682,774 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #907 in Physiological Aspects in Psychology (Books)
- #779 in Medical Physiological Aspects of Psychology
- #4413 in Anatomy (Books)

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Umer Vakil

Local Maxima: "optimisation is not an inevitable outcome of evolution, just a possible one."

May 28, 2015

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

The metaphor of the evolutionary mountain best describes the underlying idea of this book: as we 'descended with modification', our biological features, including those of our brain, were simply engineering feats that were just 'good enough' for us to survive long enough to reproduce to settle at a local maximum, somewhat effective but far from perfect (perfection being the global maximum) - with exceptions such as the human eye that prove to be marvellously designed, except for glitches such as unnecessary blind spots.

The real power of this book is how Marcus extends this evolutionary argument to human cognition, something that gives us a better intuition of how our evolutionary history lead to our brains. However, to most psychology undergraduates - the chapters on memory and pleasure will seem to contain very familiar examples from other books/textbooks (Kahneman, Trversky etc.) that are better classified by You Are Not So Smart: Why You Have Too Many Friends on Facebook, Why Your Memory Is Mostly Fiction, an d 46 Other Ways You're Deluding Yourself and You Are Now Less Dumb: How to Conquer Mob Mentality, How to Buy Happiness, and All the Other Ways to Outsmart Yourself that have a more thorough and well categorised collection of biases. Given the short size of this book, however, no matter how oft-repeated the examples are, they are just enough to support his 'Kluge' hypothesis.

Perhaps the most interesting chapters of this book is the one on how Languages and Mental Illness are examples of Kluges. After all, how we stumbling upon tongue twisters is simply an inevitable result of the way we vocalise. Marcus argues that Mental illnesses such as depression are prevalent in populations because evolution disregards its effect on our inner lives in favour of the final result - propagation - something that members who carry genetic dispositions towards these illnesses manage to do by reproducing. It is not because these illnesses necessarily have some adaptive features that allowed for them to be selected but because our mind sits on a local maximum, effective enough for us to survive but still having us run the risk of having glitchy features such as ruminative feedback cycles that result in depression (or mania).

I shouldn't forget to mention that the ability for Marcus to constantly take analogies from Computer Science and Engineering without running into jargon serve as a first-rate way to get a better hold of the idea of the mind as a error-prone gadget. The ideas tackled are deep and compelling yet as evident from the repeated quotations and derivative work in the book, they are not novel or extremely revolutionary - but neither is that something we should always expect from a book, nor does it take away from it being a fun and interesting read.

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cassdog

We may not be the precise, logical primates we tell ourselves

February 7, 2011

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

A somewhat depressing and illuminating foray in to the inner workings and mis-workings of the human brain. The use of the world kluge is a perfect description of the tinkering and layering of technologies that make up the human mind. The author does a great job describing how we aren't often as logical and as precise as we assume we are. This is largely because the older portions of our brain have had much longer to evolve and refine theirselves. The 'higher' primate brain functions arrived on the scene quite late and in a sense they are the last to be involved with our thought processes. We often make decisions based on deeper emotional and primitive reactions, while our higher more rational processes come in late to the game and make up a story about why we chose that option. When in reality, the decision was made before we even had the time to realize it. This book is useful towards the prevention of some forms of self-delusion. With the information in this book, one can at least hope to prepare one's self for the kluges of their mind.

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Kipton Tewksbury

Kluge is so apt a description of our brains

September 7, 2011

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

Marcus provides many examples of how our brains evolved to be incompletely integrated, hence a "kluge". I think he could have used stronger examples at times. The evolutionary process that lead to the klugey-ness of human brains is only lightly covered and not well developed. I have read several books and articles on the issue of the human brain being a layered evolution with minimal connections between the reptilian, the mammalian and the human cortex parts of the brain. He does illustrate why emotion and thinking flaws dominate human processes more than rationality. The fact that our legal system and political systems assume rational minds making considered, dispassionate decisions based on clear, logical and rational observations is why the resulting decisions and behaviors are so often flawed and irrational, when considered at a time remove. Marcus lays out the different mental and psychological processes that our brain naturally tends to that compromise logical and rational decision making. We say one thing and do another. Teenagers highlight this particular disconnect between our "thinking" and our "acting".

All the philosophers and economists who spin theories of behavior based on rational decision making, clearly state an ideal that is not inherent in most human thought and action. Most of the troubles in society can be traced to this human disconnect. Our brains evolved over a million plus years to survive in small groups in open, often hostile environments. The last 10,000 years of agriculture and larger social groupings have presented issues and environments that the layered human brain has not evolved to cope with adequately. Hence,for the lack of helpful, useful brain structures we make it up as we go along, and then conveniently forget that we made it up..

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Stringman

Good book, good price

July 27, 2019

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

Better condition than advertised, fast shipping and, like I wrote good book, good price.

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M. Bernardez

3 years ago, I read this.

October 21, 2011

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

It's been 3 years since I'd read this book. Looking back now, I realized that though I most certainly can't remember each and every word, nor every point made in the book, I can still trace the effects it had on me. Mainly in that I've been more aware of the nature of my own personal brain, more proactive in catching potential gotchas and most importantly, more understanding in the actions of others. That to me makes this a book I wholeheartedly recommend.

It's not a bad read, it sounds bad saying it that way but it's true. That's mostly due to the fact that I personally do not read non-fiction books. I always read purely fiction works. So for me to even finish it without a struggle is, in my opinion, a notable accomplishment on the books part(hah!)

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