my mind on books

It is possible to verify the hypothesis that we are dreaming: we can verify it by waking up. The corollary of this assertion, or rather another way of putting the same fact, is the statement that it is possible to falsify the hypothesis that we are awake: we can falsify it by waking up. But the opposite is not true. It is not possible to falsify the hypothesis that we are dreaming or to verify the hypothesis that we are awake.

Dreams, Illusion, and Other Realities by Wendy Doniger (O’Flaherty), p. 52

Decision-making turns out to be a popular topic, spanning self-help, business management, cognitive psychology, and various applied fields.

Below I have selected some titles published within the last few years (2005-2007), starred a couple that looked most interesting for the general reader (or to me at least), followed by links to some other book lists. [10/8/07 – added a section for reader recommendations ]

The Book of Hard Choices: How to Make the Right Decisions at Work and Keep Your Self-Respect by James A Autry; Peter Roy (New York : Morgan Road Books, 2006). [business-oriented]

Decision Making: 5 Steps to Better Results (Harvard Business Essentials) (Boston, Mass. : Harvard Business School ; London : McGraw-Hill [distributor], 2006). [business-oriented]

Decision Making & Problem Solving Strategies (Creating Success) by John Eric Adair (London ; Philadelphia : Kogan Page, 2007). [business-oriented]

Decision-making in Complex Environments ed. by Malcolm Cook; Janet M Noyes; Yvonne Masakowski (Aldershot, England ; Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2007). [technical/specialized]

Emotion and Reason: The Cognitive Neuroscience of Decision Making by Alain Berthoz; tr. Giselle Weiss (Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2006).

*The Era of Choice: The Ability to Choose and Its Transformation of Contemporary Life (Bradford Books) by Edward C Rosenthal (Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, 2005).

(more…)

Consciousness researcher Christof Koch is interviewed on Brain Science Podcast #22.

Koch is the author of The Quest for Consciousness: A Neurobiological Approach

I saw him speak at Berkeley when he gave the Foerster Lecture in 2006, which can be viewed through Google video.

Brain Science Podcast has many more interesting episodes, plus a list of “Best Books on the Brain.”

Tell Me a Story: A New Look at Real and Artificial Memory by Roger C. Schank

Most of the public writing I’ve done up to now has been fairly academic – from college papers to abstracts of journal articles. This book by Roger Schank (who is forever associated in my mind with the “restaurant script”) has started to change the way I think about writing. Instead of thinking of the information I want to impart and how to organize it, Schank prompts me to think more in terms of “what story can I tell about this?”

Schank discusses the relationship between storytelling and intelligence, conversation as a process of responsive storytelling, and how stories are stored in memory:

Stories are a way of preserving the connectivity of events that would otherwise be disassociated over time. (p.124)

Near the end of the book (p. 221-237) Schank suggests that greater intelligence involves extending normal human abilities along seven dimensions. The dimensions are

• data finding (“the more that interests you the better memory you are likely to have,” p. 224)
• data manipulation (“the more successfully you adapt old stories, the more creative you are,” p. 226)
• comprehension (“intelligence means being interested in explaining as much as possible rather than explaining away as much as possible,” p. 229)
• explanation (“Failure is valuable because it encourages explanation,” p. 231)
• planning (“the more intelligent you are, the more you can create new plans,” p. 233)
• communication (“the more ideas are discussed, the more insights one will come to,” p. 235)
• integration (“the smartest of us becomes curious about certain aspects of what we encounter, and it is precisely those aspects that are worth focusing on,” p. 241)

Schank is also the author of The Connoisseur’s Guide to the Mind: How We Think, How We Learn, and What It Means to Be Intelligent and The Creative Attitude: Learning to Ask and Answer the Right Questions (among others).

The above image from Wikipedia is so perfect for “My Mind on Books” – the man has a stack of books next to him, easier to see if you click on the picture to follow the link back to the higher resolution image. This has inspired me to post some other mind-related Wikipedia entries, focusing on aspects that go beyond the traditional encyclopedia articles:

• Consciousness studies at Wikibooks, including this “Table of Theories.” (Wikibooks is a “sister project” of Wikipedia.)
• There are lots of lists at Wikipedia, such as the list of “unsolved problems in neuroscience” (which seems too short) or the list of “lists of psychology topics”
• There are also portals for broad topics, such as the Mind and Brain portal.