my mind on books

Creative Intelligence: Harnessing the Power to Create, Connect, and Inspire by Bruce Nussbaum (HarperBusiness, 2013)

(kindle ed.), (amazon.co.uk)

Book description from the publisher:

Offering insights from the spheres of anthropology, psychology, education, design, and business, Creative Intelligence by Bruce Nussbaum, a leading thinker, commentator, and curator on the subjects of design, creativity, and innovation, is first book to identify and explore creative intelligence as a new form of cultural literacy and as a powerful method for problem-solving, driving innovation, and sparking start-up capitalism.

Nussbaum investigates the ways in which individuals, corporations, and nations are boosting their creative intelligence — CQ—and how that translates into their abilities to make new products and solve new problems. Ultimately, Creative Intelligence shows how to frame problems in new ways and devise solutions that are original and highly social.

Smart and eye opening, Creative Intelligence: Harnessing the Power to Create, Connect, and Inspire illustrates how to connect our creative output with a new type of economic system, Indie Capitalism, where creativity is the source of value, where entrepreneurs drive growth, and where social networks are the building blocks of the economy.

Space to Reason: A Spatial Theory of Human Thought by Markus Knauff (MIT Press, 2013)

(amazon.co.uk)

Book description from the publisher:

Many scholars believe that visual mental imagery plays a key role in reasoning. In Space to Reason, Markus Knauff argues against this view, proposing that visual images are not relevant for reasoning and can even impede the process. He also argues against the claim that human thinking is solely based on abstract symbols and is completely embedded in language. Knauff proposes a third way to think about human reasoning that relies on supramodal spatial layout models, which are more abstract than pictorial images and more concrete than linguistic representations. He argues that these spatial layout models are at the heart of human thought, even thought about nonspatial relations in the world.

For Knauff the visual images that we so often associate with reasoning are only in the foreground of conscious experience. Behind the images, the actual logical work is carried out by reasoning-specific operations on these spatial layout models. Knauff also offers a solution to the problem of indeterminacy in human reasoning, introducing the notion of a preferred layout model, which is one layout model among others that has the best chance of being mentally constructed and thus guides the further process of thought. Knauff’s “space to reason” theory covers the functional, the algorithmic, and the implementational level of analysis and is corroborated by psychological experiments, functional brain imaging, and computational modeling.

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Top Dog: The Science of Winning and Losing by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman (Twelve, 2013)

(kindle ed.), (amazon.co.uk)

Book description from the publisher:

It’s a Dog Eat Dog World. Don’t Be on the Menu.

What are the differences between a winning and losing performance? Why are we able to rise to the challenge one day, but wilt from it the next? Can we in fact become better competitors? In TOP DOG, Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman use cutting edge science to tease out the hidden factors at the core of every great triumph – and every tragic failure. By enabling you to identify your own competitive style, TOP DOG will help you tip the odds of success in your favor. Integrating wisdom from politics, finance, genetics, neuroscience, psychology, military training, sports, economics, education and more, TOP DOG offers counterintuitive, game-changing insights into the nature of competition, such as:

• Why the home field advantage in sports is just as relevant in diplomacy and deal-making
• That women are better at judging risk, while men are better at ignoring it – and how this plays out on K Street and Wall Street
• Why younger siblings are more competitive than first-borns, and how early-childhood influences shape competitive styles forever
• That the shape of entrepreneurs’ hands can be just as revealing as their business plans
• How a single biochemical can predict a winner before an event has even begun
• Why discord can be better than harmony, and why stars on a team do deserve special treatment.

As President Dwight Eisenhower said, “What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight-it’s the size of the fight in the dog.” In TOP DOG, Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman reveal the size of the fight in all of us.

See also: Book website

Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People by Mahzarin R. Banaji and Anthony G. Greenwald (Delacorte Press, 2013)

(kindle ed.), (amazon.co.uk)

Product description from the publisher:

I know my own mind.
I am able to assess others in a fair and accurate way.

These self-perceptions are challenged by leading psychologists Mahzarin R. Banaji and Anthony G. Greenwald as they explore the hidden biases we all carry from a lifetime of exposure to cultural attitudes about age, gender, race, ethnicity, religion, social class, sexuality, disability status, and nationality.

“Blindspot” is the authors’ metaphor for the portion of the mind that houses hidden biases. Writing with simplicity and verve, Banaji and Greenwald question the extent to which our perceptions of social groups—without our awareness or conscious control—shape our likes and dislikes and our judgments about people’s character, abilities, and potential.

In Blindspot, the authors reveal hidden biases based on their experience with the Implicit Association Test, a method that has revolutionized the way scientists learn about the human mind and that gives us a glimpse into what lies within the metaphoric blindspot.

The title’s “good people” are those of us who strive to align our behavior with our intentions. The aim of Blindspot is to explain the science in plain enough language to help well-intentioned people achieve that alignment. By gaining awareness, we can adapt beliefs and behavior and “outsmart the machine” in our heads so we can be fairer to those around us. Venturing into this book is an invitation to understand our own minds.

Brilliant, authoritative, and utterly accessible, Blindspot is a book that will challenge and change readers for years to come.

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See also: Book website

Physics in Mind: A Quantum View of the Brain by Werner R. Loewenstein (Basic Books, 2013)

(amazon.co.uk)

Book description from the publisher:

No one can escape a sense of awe when reflecting on the workings of the mind: we see, we hear, we feel, we are aware of the world around us. But what is the mind? What do we mean when we say we are “aware” of something? What is this peculiar state in our heads, at once utterly familiar and bewilderingly mysterious, that we call awareness or consciousness?

In Physics in Mind, eminent biophysicist Werner R. Loewenstein argues that to answer these questions, we must first understand the physical mechanisms that underlie the workings of the mind. And so begins an exhilarating journey along the sensory data stream of the brain, which shows how our most complex organ processes the vast amounts of information coming in through our senses to create a coherent, meaningful picture of the world. Bringing information theory to bear on recent advances in the neurosciences, Loewenstein reveals a web of immense computational power inside the brain. He introduces the revolutionary idea that quantum mechanics could be fundamental to how our minds almost instantaneously deal with staggering amounts of information, as in the case of the information streaming through our eyes.

Combining cutting-edge research in neuroscience and physics, Loewenstein presents an ambitious hypothesis about the parallel processing of sensory information that is the heart, hub, and pivot of the cognitive brain. Wide-ranging and brimming with insight, Physics in Mind breaks new ground in our understanding of how the mind works.

Google Books preview:

See also: Book website