Contents:
In a violent age when we should be embarrassed to talk proudly of blind faith, this is an argument which needs to come to the fore without apology or respectful tiptoeing. Irrationality is one of those books that gets under your skin and into your brain, refusing ever to leave.
But Irrationality also pokes fun at the more relatable mental gaffes we all make. Almost everyone reading these pages will at some time have paid money to see a bad film or a bad play. Despite excruciating boredom, people often refuse to leave, even if the show is so bad that they would have paid a small amount of money to avoid seeing it at all. The sensible thing for them to do is to leave, which means they only suffer the monetary loss. Richard Wiseman, is a professor of psychology, specializing in the quirky side of human nature.
In Paranormality , Wiseman turns his attention to the psychology of superstition.
In each chapter, Wiseman explores a different paranormal subject such as fortune telling, out-of-body experiences, mind control, and prophecy. Each chapter ends with a how-to on replicating the discussed effect with family and friends. Amid all of the fun and intrigue, there is a serious idea about human nature. We evolved to be good hunter-gathers of patterns as well as food. When there is a rustle in the grass, from a survival perspective, it is always better to assume that there lies a tiger in wait. Richard Wiseman has written many highly accessible and enjoyable books offering an insight into the science behind such areas as the paranormal, luck and better living.
This offers a terrific overview of why we might come to believe in the supernatural. HighExistence is an open-minded community of freethinkers. We like to challenge the norms and rebel against the status quo.
Almost everyone reading these pages will at some time have paid money to see a bad film or a bad play. Mouza marked it as to-read Jul 01, He created a system called FACS facial action coding system , took thousands of pictures of his own face, and assigned each arrangement a value based on which individual facial muscles were triggered. James Cowden marked it as to-read Apr 09, In chapter 6 I detail how the physical brain implements the memory-prediction model—in other words, how the brain actually works.
This attitude is often accompanied by a resistance to institutions and authorities like the police, government, and Big Pharma, resulting in a tendency to explore fringe health practices like meditation, psychedelics, yoga, and alternative medicine. Trick or Treatment is the perfect book for HEthens who are curious to explore alternative medicine but do not want to waste their time or money on treatments that are proven across the board to be either inefficient or, in some cases, harmful tricks.
Trick or Treatment also has some fantastic chapters on the problems with determining truth and why it matters. Conspiracy theories are damn tempting to believe. We know that there is information being withheld from us.
If you have the latter belief, you are essentially suffering from full-blown conspiritis just made that word up. To counteract this condition I suggest Voodoo Histories , a book that takes an honest, unbiased look at the prevalent conspiracy theories and examines the weight of the evidence on both sides. John Medina is a molecular biologist who also has a lifelong love of brains. There are chapters focusing on how the brain evolved, what type of exercise boosts brain power, how sleep benefits cognition, how stress destroys cognition, the right way to remember things, and the proven way to increase your attention span.
With such a potentially dry topic, Medina does an amazing job at making it highly readable and, in parts, hilarious. Webb and Stafford have a knack for breaking down complex neuroscience in a relatable and useful way. Mind Hacks is not really a self-help book in the same way that Brain Rules is see above. You learn how each system works, which in turn helps you to steer it in the right direction. If you want, for example, to retain more of what you read, knowing how short-term and long-term memory work will help you set the conditions which allow for maximum retention.
Or if you want to be able to see in the dark each to their own it helps to know that your peripheral vision is better at detecting motion and is more sensitive to light than your focused vision. Mind Hacks is the perfect book if you want to know how we actually function and why this knowledge can improve everything that we do. The philosopher David Chalmers believes that consciousness does not exist purely in the brain. He argues that tools such as pen and paper are an extension of consciousness because they are able to fulfill the same roles as the tools of the mind.
On the surface, Upgrade Your Life is a book on optimizing your computer for productivity. While Upgrade Your Life has some fantastic chapters on to-do lists and designing your routine for maximum productivity, the bulk of the book focuses on your computer, including the perfect system for blasting through your emails, fighting against hackers and viruses, and just generally turning your desktop into a nuclear workbench for stratospheric productivity.
This psychology book could be placed anywhere in this list and it would fit the category because it covers everything that Derren is about. However, the goal of the book, in the end, is to leave the reader with a set of mental tools to navigate the world. In Tricks of the Mind , Derren Brown takes us on a tour of his mind and offers his best insights on many popular self-help subjects. He gives his tips on speed-reading, Neuro Linguistic Programming NLP , confidence, reading body language, memory techniques, hypnosis and much more.
This book offers insightful and useful ways to perform tricks with your mind, while always reminding us how easily our minds can be tricked. Back in university I had became pretty interested in improving my memory. Memory is an overlooked skill nowadays.
People have gotten used to using their smartphone apps for recording important information. This is a classic work which has been re-printed many times since the very quaint s edition which I have at home. Lorayne is a very successful magician and memory expert. This book will cover in more detail the principles I have set out [ in Tricks of the Mind ]. In this book, the American psychologist Lauren Slater deconstructs and describes some of the most important and disturbing psychological experiments of the twentieth century, including the conditioning work by B.
It took me a while to like this book: To begin with I found it self-indulgent, speculative and silly, but after a while it really won me over. Her chapter on addiction in particular is surprisingly moving. On Intelligence is one of the most thought-provoking books I have ever read. The book starts with some background on why previous attempts at understanding intelligence and building intelligent machines have failed. I then introduce and develop the core idea of the theory, what I call the memory-prediction framework.
In chapter 6 I detail how the physical brain implements the memory-prediction model—in other words, how the brain actually works. I then discuss social and other implications of the theory, which for many readers might be the most thought-provoking section.
The book ends with a discussion of intelligent machines—how we can build them and what the future will be like. This is certainly not your average psychology book. Most of the ideas Jeff Hawkins presents in On Intelligence are radical to the extent that they will change the way you view intelligence and consciousness forever. Hawkins covers areas as diverse as consciousness, memory, vision, and the dangers of AI.
It was mine too. Daniel Schacter is a Harvard psychologist and one of the world-leaders in memory. Memories that persist, for example, are one of the sins of memory that can lead to things like post traumatic stress syndrome. However, persistence is also necessary for long-term memory, and so it is essential.
All seven sins of memory, Schacter explains, can be classified into two broad groups: Memory is such a fundamental part of being human, if you are serious about mastering the study of human nature it would be a grave sin not to read The Seven Sins of Memory. For those of you still unfamiliar with him, this is the supposed electrocution experiment we set up in The Heist. How is it that us material creatures can experience the world in a seemingly immaterial way?
What gives way to conscious experience is one of the greatest mysteries in philosophy and science. Thanks for reading my article. I'm the Content Director at HighExistence. Refresh and try again. Open Preview See a Problem? Thanks for telling us about the problem.
Return to Book Page. If you have ever been interested in the fascinating and revealing world of emotions, superstitions or body language, then this book is for you. Craig James Baxter author of two previous Amazon best-selling books on body language has developed this useful, practical guide which will help you develop and improve your knowledge of human behavio Why You Should Read This Book! Craig James Baxter author of two previous Amazon best-selling books on body language has developed this useful, practical guide which will help you develop and improve your knowledge of human behaviour across three key topics: Emotions — Learn what an emotion is and how to detect them, how they work and how they can vary.
Also, discover how emotions can be manipulated and why. Reveal more about the dark side of the emotion of happiness and learn how the emotion of fear helps the body react instantaneously to perceived threats. Superstitions — Learn more about how human behaviour can be heavily influenced by the power of the unknown, and uncover the often unexpected sources of some common superstitious sayings.
Discover how superstitions have infiltrated many areas of life, from the world of sport to restaurant dining, and how amulets, charms and stones are believed to have certain abilities to either attract good fortune or repel evil spirits or misfortune. Body language — Learn how you can adapt your own body language to portray confidence to bring about success in your personal and work life.
Reveal how to potentially spot a liar and also uncover the surprising origins of some body language gestures. Kindle Edition , pages. Published November 23rd by www. To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. To ask other readers questions about Human Behaviour , please sign up. Lists with This Book. This book is not yet featured on Listopia. Dec 03, Elise rated it liked it Shelves: While I would have loved to have given this book four stars, there were a few glaring editorial errors in this Kindle edition, which threw me off in a bad way.
The content itself is fine. I mainly wanted to read it for the superstitions section, which I thought would be interesting, and it was. The trio of subjects Baxter chose to write on seems a little odd, but they do kind of go hand-in-hand. If you're familiar with Craig Baxter's material on body language analysis, then there is not going to While I would have loved to have given this book four stars, there were a few glaring editorial errors in this Kindle edition, which threw me off in a bad way.
If you're familiar with Craig Baxter's material on body language analysis, then there is not going to be much new territory covered here. A simple book, but not bad. It read more like an essay. Ike rated it it was amazing Jul 12, Cherrelin rated it it was ok Nov 25, Hollie Robinson rated it liked it Oct 15, Leonard rated it really liked it May 26, John rated it really liked it Jan 17, Melanie rated it liked it Aug 07, Krysta Finch rated it it was ok Jan 11, Thomas Hayes rated it it was ok Jan 21,