Black-and-White Thinking

The Burden of a Binary Brain in a Complex World

By: Kevin Dutton

Narrated by: Theo Solomon

Length: 12 hrs

Publisher's summary

A groundbreaking and timely audiobook about how evolutionary biology can explain our black-and-white brains, and a lesson in how we can escape the pitfalls of binary thinking.

Several million years ago, natural selection equipped us with binary, black-and-white brains. Though the world was arguably simpler back then, it was in many ways much more dangerous. Not coincidentally, the binary brain was highly adept at detecting risk: the ability to analyze threats and respond to changes in the sensory environment - a drop in temperature, the crack of a branch - was essential to our survival as a species.

Since then, the world has evolved - but we, for the most part, haven’t. Confronted with a panoply of shades of gray, our brains have a tendency to “force quit”: to sort the things we see, hear, and experience into manageable but simplistic categories. We stereotype, pigeon-hole, and, above all, draw lines where in reality there are none. In our modern, interconnected world, it might seem like we are ill-equipped to deal with the challenges we face - that living with a binary brain is like trying to navigate a teeming city center with a map that shows only highways.

In Black-and-White Thinking, the renowned psychologist Kevin Dutton pulls back the curtains of the mind to reveal a new way of thinking about a problem as old as humanity itself. While our instinct for categorization often leads us astray, encouraging polarization, rigid thinking, and sometimes outright denialism, it is an essential component of the mental machinery we use to make sense of the world. Simply put, unless we perceived our environment as a chessboard, our brains wouldn’t be able to play the game.

Using the latest advances in psychology, neuroscience, and evolutionary biology, Dutton shows how we can optimize our tendency to categorize and fine-tune our minds to avoid the pitfalls of too little, and too much, complexity. He reveals the enduring importance of three “super categories” - fight or flight, us versus them, and right or wrong - and argues that they remain essential to not only convincing others to change their minds but to changing the world for the better. Black-and-White Thinking is a scientifically informed wake-up call for an era of increasing extremism and a thought-provoking, uplifting guide to training our gray matter to see that gray really does matter.

A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2021 Kevin Dutton (P)2021 Macmillan Audio

Viewfinder Shifting

For the open-minded, it will help shift perspective in a dynamic world. A must-read book.

wonderful

This was well crafted and intriguing. As much as we may think we are open minded and neutral there are many pieces of tribalism that we carry whether we want to admit it or not.

Disappointing, but still a good read

It is not nearly as good as his other books, but still fairly throught provoking at parts. I needed to skip parts of it and he does at times show pretty major political bias, which does take away from the point of the book considerably. I would still recommend it, but don't be afraid to skip 30 sec here or there.

Interesting, but could have delved deeper.

This book had some interesting examples and case studies, but could have delved much deeper. A lot was just common sense or information that anyone who’s paying attention probably already has. There are much better books about the flawed ways our brains parse the world, but this is a decent introduction for someone new to the topic. The author has a decent sense of humor which makes this less dry than some cognitive science books.

Bad

The concept is good but the writing is unbearable. I never stop reading a book before it’s done but I could only make it 3/4.