my mind on books

LibraryThing has a “tagmash” function that is a good way to search for books at the intersection of two or more terms. You don’t have to be registered to use the search function, and combining tags will locate books in people’s personal libraries that they have labeled with (both/all) the search terms.

Here is an example, books tagged “consciousness” and “science fiction”, which at this time gives 64 results. Along the side there are also some “related tagmashes” offered, such as “consciousness, fiction” or “philosophy, science fiction.”

“When shove comes to push” in today’s Boston Globe (March 2) looks at the forthcoming book Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness by economist Richard Thaler and legal scholar Cass Sunstein.
From the book description:

Thaler and Sunstein invite us to enter an alternative world, one that takes our humanness as a given. They show that by knowing how people think, we can design choice environments that make it easier for people to choose what is best for themselves, their families, and their society. Using colorful examples from the most important aspects of life, Thaler and Sunstein demonstrate how thoughtful “choice architecture” can be established to nudge us in beneficial directions without restricting freedom of choice.

io9 has a good list of science fiction novels “that will rearrange how you think”; read down into the comments for more suggestions.

Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions by Dan Ariely is a recent book that is currently #13 at Amazon. Amazon has “Search Inside” for this book, plus some related videos.

From the book description:

In a series of illuminating, often surprising experiments, MIT behavioral economist Dan Ariely refutes the common assumption that we behave in fundamentally rational ways. Blending everyday experience with groundbreaking research, Ariely explains how expectations, emotions, social norms, and other invisible, seemingly illogical forces skew our reasoning abilities.

Not only do we make astonishingly simple mistakes every day, but we make the same types of mistakes, Ariely discovers. We consistently overpay, underestimate, and procrastinate. We fail to understand the profound effects of our emotions on what we want, and we overvalue what we already own. Yet these misguided behaviors are neither random nor senseless. They’re systematic and predictable—making us predictably irrational.

From drinking coffee to losing weight, from buying a car to choosing a romantic partner, Ariely explains how to break through these systematic patterns of thought to make better decisions. Predictably Irrational will change the way we interact with the world—one small decision at a time.

Website for the book
This would make a nice pair with another recent book – The Logic of Life.

When we say that we’re conscious, then, we’re doing something: we’re talking (or signing or writing) and/or imagining to ourselves about both our external and internal environments, and our own public and private behavior.

“Consciousness is nothing but a word” by Henry D. Schlinger at eSkeptic