The title - Why Everyone (else) is a Hypocrite - is a little misleading. What Kurzban is trying to do is unify a lot of behavioral theories with the modular concept of the mind.

Why Everyone (else) is a Hypocrite challenges assumptions about "self" and "consciousness." The modular view of the brain is introduced, with interesting analogies to computer science, and then using the modular view reviews commonly held assumptions about how the brain functions. Rather than one person simultaneously holding two contradictory believes, dualism is explain by the module view as two different modules reaching contradictory conclusions.

The modular view of the brain is simple to get, just extend the concept of brain hemispheres. It is unknown how many modules there are or which modules are connected. Modules are like apps on a phone; they contain local information and only pass certain information to other modules (some don't communicate).

Only certain modules communicate with the "consciousness" module. Rather than think of your consciousness as the part that controls you, consider your consciousness the spokesman.

So much of human life is determined by social beliefs rather than absolute fact that the human mind evolved to be "strategically wrong." The spokesperson is feed information that spins the story in the best possible light for winning mates and friends.

Sometimes it is better not to know, cases where modules not sharing information is a strategic advantage. Often it is advantageous for the consciousness (the spokesman) to be positively biased while internal modules rely on more accurate information.

There is a social price to pay for knowingly and outwardly being self-interested. But if you don't know how your behavior impacts others, you can't be accused of being self-interested.

Sometimes operating on biases information is an advantage. We tend to attribute success to our abilities and failure to chance. This self bias is detrimental in objective situations, but in subjective situations (we evolved in a subjective world) being convinced of your own abilities is beneficial. Your overconfidence can influence how others calculate the odds of your future success and longevity (the key to being a good friend or mate).

We don't have set preferences, decisions are calculated on the fly. Patient modules and impatient models. Based on context (historical - think pavolog's dog, environmental, and internal). Willpower is really just an effortmeter, it tries to determine if it is worth the effort to continue. Reset effortmeter by reward - food, praise.

Kurzban addresses morality last - here are the most unanswered questions and controversy. First Kurzban illustrates who contradictory our morals around sex and drugs are. We can't really explain why our morals, our explanations are just rationalization. What we really want to do is control other people. Different modules explain why we condemn behaviors in others, but do them ourselves (there is nothing in our brains that forces us to adopt one universal moral code). The universal disdain for hypocrisy is a evolutionary code of law - its purpose is to make others follow the rules they set for others.

If you want a single psychological/cog-sci model to understand the world...there is NOTHING written that does better than this book. I say this having read most of the other choices.

Pinker, Haidt, Seligman, Miller, Kahneman, Brooks, Gladwell, Minsky, Lyubomirsky, Damasio, Freud, Vygotsky, Hofstadter ... whatever. I liked many of their books...but this is SO much better.

This is a better book. Partly it's better because the core hypothesis and scientific underpinning is better...and partly because it's more fun to read.

Core line: It's fairly obvious to modern psychology that the notion of the unitary self is absurd, and completely unsupportable. Rather, the "self" is a collection of modules that are connected to one another in various ways, think a committee. The part of your self that is verbal and that you think of as "self" is probably best understood as the brain-committee's press secretary...but the idea that you have access to your decision-making process in 98% of all decisions you make is ROFL funny. Your brain-committee makes a decision, and your verbal press-secretary "you"-module makes up (words used advisedly, because that's really what happens) reasons after the fact.

I read the Kindle edition, where it is hard to follow the chapter endnotes..

Omi gwad! This author brings a very meaningful and sensible perspective to evolutionary psychology. He adds tremendous value to an already invaluable framework of evolutionary psychology. He seems to have added the key pieces of puzzle, that explains human nature and its seeming contradictions. It is a book about science but can be a self-help book for the wisdom that it imparts. I would urge the author to take up "So what?" in his next book. Given these hard facts, I would like him to challenge the very purpose of human life and life itself? How would human animal, make meaning out of this meaningless but seemingly serious game.

This book reminds me a famous quote from Isaac Asimov: "The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka' but 'That's funny...'". Kuzban takes the reader on a fantastic tour and explains how the theory of modularity of mind explains lots of mysteries (such as "why do people lock their refrigerators?") related to human cognition. This is a funny book, funny in the Asimov's sense, of course, and yet it does not refrain from strongly arguing for clarification of why modularity of mind makes sense especially from the evolutionary point of view (which is the only scientific point of view when it comes understanding biology).

Sometimes the author overuses humor and asks wrong questions such as "Can you beat MS Word in chess?" (this is especially disturbing because a few sentences ago he warns the reader that questions such as "Did you stop beating your wife?" is wrong due to wrong assumptions). Nevertheless his style keeps this very important (and controversial for most of the philosophers as well as laymen) topic alive and pulsating through every page.

This book will probably one of the best references I'm going to use when it comes to the mechanisms of mind as well discussions regarding self, illusion of self and consciousness. It is written as a popular science book but it also includes enough pointers to scientific articles with more details and depth. I can assure you that your view of 'being a human and having a single, unified notion of self' will radically change (or at least you'll start to ask some questions) after this scientific gem.