Review - 'Idiot Brain - What Your Head Is Really Up To' by Dean Burnett

Idiot Brain is a delve into the messy ways the brain works and how it can sometimes go awry. It touches upon a variety of interesting topics, including what is intelligence, how does memory work, what determines personality, and what happens when the brain isn't working correctly.

My favorite section is Chapter 7's discussion about the brain's tendency to favor a "just and fair world", so if we see bad things happen to others, we tend to blame them, especially if the victim is someone we strongly identify with. The brain sees it as, if that someone is just like us and bad things are happening to them, then it must be due to their own fault... otherwise, the world is random and bad things may happen to us too, which is very unpleasant for the brain to contemplate.

A weakness of this book is that instead of leading the reader on a journey of understanding, everything is just told to the reader, one fact after another. This makes it hard to retain much information, as it's too dense. I would've liked to have seen more examples of the interesting psychology experiments that the author alludes to and that give rise to some of the findings, but those are quickly glossed over in a lot of places. Also, a lot of time is spent on giving proper scientific terms to everything, which I don't think is really necessary for better understanding of the content.

Another weakness is that at times the book reads like a stream of consciousness that hasn't seen an editor. This is most evident in Chapter 8, where a section comes off as the author ranting against anyone who doesn't understand that depression isn't a result of selfishness. While I agree with that, the section contains very little scientific evidence to back up that claim... it was mostly just the author going on.

In conclusion, while the topics covered in this book are interesting and it has a few illuminating moments within its pages, I think the way it's presented makes it hard to retain and take a lot out of the book. Also, the quality of the sections in the book are uneven, with some being very well-researched and insightful, and others much less so.

Readaroo Rating: 3 stars