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Kluge: The Haphazard Construction of the Human Mind Hardcover – March 18, 2008

by Gary Marcus (Author)

67 customer reviews

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Are we noble in reason? Perfect, in God's image? Far from it, says New York University psychologist Gary Marcus. In this lucid and revealing book, Marcus argues that the mind is not an elegantly designed organ but rather a "kluge," a clumsy, cobbled-together contraption. He unveils a fundamentally new way of looking at the human mind -- think duct tape, not supercomputer -- that sheds light on some of the most mysterious aspects of human nature.

Taking us on a tour of the fundamental areas of human experience -- memory, belief, decision-making, language, and happiness -- Marcus reveals the myriad ways our minds fall short. He examines why people often vote against their own interests, why money can't buy happiness, why leaders often stick to bad decisions, and why a sentence like "people people left left" ties us in knots even though it's only four words long.

Marcus also offers surprisingly effective ways to outwit our inner kluge, for the betterment of ourselves and society. Throughout, he shows how only evolution -- haphazard and undirected -- could have produced the minds we humans have, while making a brilliant case for the power and usefulness of imperfection.

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Why are we subject to irrational beliefs, inaccurate memories, even war? We can thank evolution, Marcus says, which can only tinker with structures that already exist, rather than create new ones: Natural selection... tends to favor genes that have immediate advantages rather than long-term value. Marcus (The Birth of the Mind), director of NYU's Infant Language Learning Center, refers to this as kluge, a term engineers use to refer to a clumsily designed solution to a problem. Thus, memory developed in our prehominid ancestry to respond with immediacy, rather than accuracy; one result is erroneous eyewitness testimony in courtrooms. In describing the results of studies of human perception, cognition and beliefs, Marcus encapsulates how the mind is contaminated by emotions, moods, desires, goals, and simple self-interest.... The mind's fragility, he says, is demonstrated by mental illness, which seems to have no adaptive purpose. In a concluding chapter, Marcus offers a baker's dozen of suggestions for getting around the brain's flaws and achieving true wisdom. While some are self-evident, others could be helpful, such as Whenever possible, consider alternate hypotheses and Don't just set goals. Make contingency plans. Using evolutionary psychology, Marcus educates the reader about mental flaws in a succinct, often enjoyable way. (Apr. 16)
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From Booklist

A university psychology professor who periodically writes for mass media, Marcus here punctures the high regard humanity has for its species-distinctive qualities. Whether it’s memory, rationality, language, or free will, our noble human traits are hopelessly entangled with our baser drives, which have survived the dynamics of evolution. Blending discussion of experiments from cognitive psychology with speculation about why people are far less logical than they believe, Marcus latches onto the term kluge, which comes from the engineering world and is jargon for a fix that ain’t perfect but good enough. It’s a productive figure of speech for Marcus’ argument that deliberative thinking probably had an evolutionary advantage (save seeds to plant next season), but seems in permanent conflict with reflexive impulses having more ancient evolutionary advantage (eat seeds now). Carrying the point across a gamut of behaviors, from money to mental illnesses to talking, Marcus develops his idea of the klugelike mind, in which emotion perpetually besieges the intellect, with appealing clarity. --Gilbert Taylor

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Product details

Hardcover: 224 pages
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Co; 1 edition (April 16, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0618879641
ISBN-13: 978-0618879649
Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.7 x 8.2 inches
Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 67 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,379,159 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #423 in Books > Medical Books > Psychology > Physiological Aspects
- #507 in Books > Health, Fitness & Dieting > Psychology & Counseling > Physiological Aspects
- #2762 in Books > Science & Math > Biological Sciences > Anatomy

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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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David Pham

Turning a paradigm on it's head

June 8, 2008

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

After completing the book, I found myself speaking about it in conversation with my co-workers or friends. It's interesting to hear nuances to paradigms that seem to be held as Truth in their respected communities. What Kludge does in approaching paradigms such as evolutionary psychology or ID, is by appealing to the reader sensibilities and rational. Not that evolution is elegant or beautiful, but understand not every breakdown is a genetic advantage, especially in the human mind.

The most powerful idea presented is the notion that evolution does not have foresight in considering our happiness, comfort, joy, or overall health per se. Instead, it does not care. It cares about pass on genes, and to the extend of whatever works immediately is fine.

Things like addiction, seem to be a horrible disease and why should it be advantageous? Or how about obesity? Why do we spend over $85 billion dollars on chronic back pain as a nation? Weren't our spines suppose to be able to handle our weight?

This book is interesting in adding on to someone's understanding of the world. At least it makes you think a bit.

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