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A review by aranthe02
Inevitable Illusions: How Mistakes of Reason Rule Our Minds by Massimo Piattelli Palmarini
1.0
I came to this book hoping to get a little more insight into the work of Tversky and Kahneman; instead I was treated to needlessly complex prose, poor layout, gee whiz logic and a final paragraph that was completely uncalled for and leaves me baffled as to the author's motives.
The book starts off well enough, Piatelli-Palmarini begins with some simple examples of how we, as humans, can fool ourselves. However, this is also where I began to see the problems that would come to plague this book: the writing style felt stilted and overly complex. Bits of logical, connective sentences seemed to be missing. On his second example, part of the reason became clear, The author put some of this information in an appendix at the back of the book. This forces you, the reader, to constantly flip to the back for every little detail. After a bit, this became annoying.
While the appendix provided the missing links, it did not help the writing style. Perhaps something was lost in the translation, but so many times I had to go back over the sentence to be sure I read the author correctly. This was not just language usage, but general logic was left out. This became really clear in the author's description of Bayes. So much was left out that I feel an unfamiliar reader will leave the book with an incomplete understanding. In fact, for almost all the cognitive illusions, I feel the reader will leave missing some of his points, or worse, find his arguments so obtuse, that she will discount the entire field. This is both dangerous and a disservice.
What's worse, the author spends nearly 7% of the book attacking one man, Gerd Gigerenzer. Additionally, the author tends to be completely dismissive of anyone who doesn't completely agree with him. When you are talking about cognitive issues, speaking in absolutes will come back to bite you. It also sets off all of my warning flags. This is someone with an ax to grind; not someone who is hear to teach.
The final paragraph though is the one that sealed the deal for me. He, out of no where, attacks biological evolutionists! Now granted there is some field or question on adaptation, but to dismiss almost an entire field, well, that takes a lot. It also makes me suspect the author's ability to think critically.
The book starts off well enough, Piatelli-Palmarini begins with some simple examples of how we, as humans, can fool ourselves. However, this is also where I began to see the problems that would come to plague this book: the writing style felt stilted and overly complex. Bits of logical, connective sentences seemed to be missing. On his second example, part of the reason became clear, The author put some of this information in an appendix at the back of the book. This forces you, the reader, to constantly flip to the back for every little detail. After a bit, this became annoying.
While the appendix provided the missing links, it did not help the writing style. Perhaps something was lost in the translation, but so many times I had to go back over the sentence to be sure I read the author correctly. This was not just language usage, but general logic was left out. This became really clear in the author's description of Bayes. So much was left out that I feel an unfamiliar reader will leave the book with an incomplete understanding. In fact, for almost all the cognitive illusions, I feel the reader will leave missing some of his points, or worse, find his arguments so obtuse, that she will discount the entire field. This is both dangerous and a disservice.
What's worse, the author spends nearly 7% of the book attacking one man, Gerd Gigerenzer. Additionally, the author tends to be completely dismissive of anyone who doesn't completely agree with him. When you are talking about cognitive issues, speaking in absolutes will come back to bite you. It also sets off all of my warning flags. This is someone with an ax to grind; not someone who is hear to teach.
The final paragraph though is the one that sealed the deal for me. He, out of no where, attacks biological evolutionists! Now granted there is some field or question on adaptation, but to dismiss almost an entire field, well, that takes a lot. It also makes me suspect the author's ability to think critically.