I read this for the All-Nonfiction group and I wasn’t terribly impressed although parts were interesting It seems like this book is comprised of a lot of things I already knew on some level, but had never really thought about.
And the layout is rather different from most books, too. The first six chapters serve as the main material, the “text” so to speak, while the last eleven chapters that opening material is used on various subjects like Laughter, Art or Medicine, The authors actually encourage the reader to skip around in Part 2 and read what they’re more interested in.
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The Elephant in the Brain
by Kevin Simler and Robin Hanson
2017 / 397 pages
read by Jeffrey Kafer – 10h 26m
rating: 5 (mixed) / psychology
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I suppose it’s interesting to read about as written by a couple of guys who have researched it and given the subject of motives a lot of thought. Yes, it’s basically about motives in many ways they work with and without our knowledge.
I’m not sure what I expected – I think the next step, maybe, “Physician, heal thyself.” Or what an “examined” life looks like? Anyway, after that 6-chapter set-up, the book goes into the following topics listed by chapter. I read all of them with breaks in between:
7. Body Language
8. Laughter – X
9. Conversation – X
10 Consumption
11. Art
12. Charity X
13. Education
14. Medicine
15. Religion x
16. Politics
(Those marked with an X were more interesting and I might not have completely finished a couple of the non-X’ed. )
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/BgBrXpByCSmCLjpwr/book-review-the-elephant-in-the-brain
Bottom line? This book gets a lot of high ratings on Amazon, Audible and Goodreads. It just didn’t work for me.
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