The Believing Brain

From Ghosts and Gods to Politics and Conspiracies - How We Construct Beliefs and Reinforce Them as Truths

By: Michael Shermer

Narrated by: Michael Shermer

Length: 13 hrs and 34 mins

Publisher's summary

In this, his magnum opus, the world’s best known skeptic and critical thinker, Dr. Michael Shermer—founding publisher of Skeptic magazine and perennial monthly columnist (“Skeptic”) for Scientific American—presents his comprehensive theory on how beliefs are born, formed, nourished, reinforced, challenged, changed, and extinguished. This book synthesizes Dr. Shermer’s 30 years of research to answer the question of how and why we believe what we do in all aspects of our lives, from our suspicions and superstitions to our politics, economics, and social beliefs.

In this book Dr. Shermer is interested in more than just why people believe weird things, or why people believe this or that claim, but in why people believe anything at all. His thesis is straightforward: We form our beliefs for a variety of subjective, personal, emotional, and psychological reasons in the context of environments created by family, friends, colleagues, culture, and society at large; after forming our beliefs, we then defend, justify, and rationalize them with a host of intellectual reasons, cogent arguments, and rational explanations. Beliefs come first, explanations for beliefs follow.

Dr. Shermer also explains the neuroscience behind our beliefs. The brain is a belief engine. From sensory data flowing in through the senses, the brain naturally begins to look for and find patterns, and then infuses those patterns with meaning. These meaningful patterns become beliefs. Once beliefs are formed, the brain begins to look for and find confirmatory evidence in support of those beliefs, which adds an emotional boost of further confidence in the beliefs and thereby accelerates the process of reinforcing them—and round and round the process goes in a positive feedback loop of belief confirmation. Dr. Shermer outlines the numerous cognitive tools our brains engage to reinforce our beliefs as truths and to insure that we are always right.

©2011 Michael Shermer (P)2011 Michael Shermer

Critic reviews

“The physicist Richard Feynman once said that the easiest person to fool is yourself, and as a result he argued that as a scientist one has to be especially careful to try and find out not only what is right about one's theories, but what might also be wrong with them. If we all followed this maxim of skepticism in everyday life, the world would probably be a better place. But we don't. In this book Michael Shermer lucidly describes why and how we are hard wired to 'want to believe'. With a narrative that gently flows from the personal to the profound, Shermer shares what he has learned after spending a lifetime pondering the relationship between beliefs and reality, and how to be prepared to tell the difference between the two.” (Lawrence M. Krauss, Foundation Professor and Director of the Origins Project at Arizona State University, author of Quantum Man: Richard Feynman's Life in Science)

“ The Believing Brain is a tour de force integrating neuroscience and the social sciences to explain how irrational beliefs are formed and reinforced, while leaving us confident our ideas are valid. This is a must read for everyone who wonders why religious and political beliefs are so rigid and polarized—or why the other side is always wrong, but somehow doesn't see it.” (Dr. Leonard Mlodinow, author of The Drunkard’s Walk and The Grand Design with Stephen Hawking)

Nice read and helpful look into our belief systems

Where does The Believing Brain rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

It's right up there with all the others. 4 stars from me, means its a very enjoyable book full of easy to understand information presented in a clear manner.

What about Michael Shermer’s performance did you like?

He reads in his own voice and I enjoyed listening to it.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

Nope. Too much to take in, especially if one considers the implications of the content.

Any additional comments?

Chapter transitions sucked.

Fascinating

The book was much better than I had expected it to be. Fascinating to hear how our brain normally reacts within a variety of situations.

3 out of 4 well-covered gets 4 out of 5 stars

First, let me get the performance aspect out of the way. Some of the other reviews are pretty hard on Mr. Shermer's efforts here at reading his own work. While it's true that the reading is not as good as one done by a more professional reader, it's still perfectly acceptable and doesn't distract.

Now, on to the content!

In the subtitle, Shermer lists the main topics he will touch on: ghosts, gods, politics, and conspiracies. I am familiar with Shermer's work in the excellent book "Why People Believe Weird Things" as well as an occasion article I've read, so I felt like I knew what I was getting into, and I did with 1 minor exception.

I did get what I expected in the ghosts, gods, and conspiracies: a clear approach to understanding and explaining why people believe in such nonsensical flights of fancy, with lots of examples, references to current research and well-thought out arguments. I found the underlying question of "why do people believe in _anything_" quite rich and fascinating, and handled well.

Those are the "3 out of 4 well-covered"...

I was very disappointed in the political treatment. Shermer dropped the ball here in a 2 ways.

For one, Shermer strongly promoted his Libertarian viewpoint. Without getting into the details, if you've ran across Libertarian discourses on the internet (and if you are on a message board of any substantial size, I know you have), you've heard everything Shermer has to say on that political position. I don't think any well-read person will hear anything new here, regardless of what politics you hold.

The larger disappointment, which only makes the Libertarian focus worse, was an over-reliance on putting political discussion into the left-right American political spectrum. Only after a long initial discussion confined to the American left-right spectrum, did we get a few brief sentences on a larger global perspective on politics, and then only to simplify them down into the same American left-right spectrum. There was virtually no consideration given to political thought outside of a strict American perspective.

Badly managed and highly disappointed with the political topic handling, I must say.

However, the rest of the content was quite well done, and even the political stuff was worth listening to, if only to reinforce my own personal theory that there is no such thing as true intellectual or rational commentary possible on modern American politics, from any perspective!

Overall, this is a skeptical book written by a deep thinking skeptic, and if that sort of thing is of interest to you, this is worth a listen.

Very good and covers many topics

I love The Believing Brain. Shermer writes about the biological and societal reasons people may believe things that are unproven and methods by which people can protect themselves against irrational belief.

Very good...but a few weird mistakes...

I very much enjoyed this audiobook! There were some odd mistakes and mispronunciations, but it didn't detract from the content too much. Even if one disagrees with Shermer's beliefs or messages, which even I do on occasion, there is plenty to be garnered from this book, and that is due in large part to how accessible Shermer wrote this book to be. I highly recommend it!

A great experience on every level

Educational, thought provoking, mind boggling, enjoyable. Check.

But this lecturer is as great in his delivery as the information he shares about our universe (universes?) and the history of mankind's struggle to comprehend and even predict its behavior.

To say he is amazingly articulate is an understatement. But he is also engaging, lively and entertaining due to the obvious depth of understand, enthusiasm and passion he has for this field of study.

I am no rocket scientist but I am considered fairly intelligent. Still - and with pleasure I must add - I probably listened to some chapters of this book several times in my effort to really absorb the information. But I enjoyed it as much or more the last hearing as the first.

And I'll probably continue to revisit and enjoy this book for years to come. It's that great.

You will come away from this experience with a good basic knowledge (at the survey course level) of cosmology, relativity, the real (and fascinating) meaning and significance of Einstein and E=MC2, quantum physics, black holes, quarks, atoms, string theory, and the continuing quest for the 'Theory of Everything'.

One of if not my best ever Audiobook experiences.

The Believing Brain was amazing!

This was one of the most educating and enjoyable books I have ever read. I highly recommend it!

host of MythVision Podcast
Derek Lambert

Interesting insight on 'people'

It was interesting to learn how and why people believe what they do, despite evidence to the contrary. I don't agree with everything Shermer wrote, but overall he did some insightful research. It's a worthy read.

Maybe The Best Explanation Ever

There are so many reasons why I value this book so highly. The basic issues Shermer deals with are so important to understand particularly at this Moment in The American Experiment.

I have been doing a lot of Reading and Thinking about the definition of Truth currently being debated in Morality, Politics, Science, and Religion. We all grew up thinking we knew what Truth was, but now we hear that it is a matter of Red and Blue Opinion. Shermer takes the question one step further toward the Heart of the Matter: How does the Brain process the Search for Truth amid the Battle between Belief and Perceived Reality?!

By looking at the question from so many angles he makes a powerful case for a Human Being not as Homo Rationalis, one who takes in all the Pros & Cons of the World he/she sees before coming to a conclusion, but rather as one whose Brain is a Belief Engine:

We are not “Homo Rationalis”. We don’t sit at a table confronting Reality and use Reason and Logic to develop our Beliefs:

“We start with the Belief we receive through Genetics of Personality & Temperament, Family Dynamics & Cultural Background, Parents & Siblings, Peer Groups & Teachers, Education & Books, Mentors & Heroes and various Life Experiences, and THEN try to find justification for it. We look for patterns in the Reality our senses feed us filtered through the colored lens of Worldview, paradigms, experience, hypotheses, conjecture, hunches, biases, prejudices, accumulated through living and choose the ones that BEST CONFIRM our Beliefs.”

Our Beliefs engage us in a constant battle with the powerful forces of:
PATTERNICITY: Connecting the dots of the signals our Senses are sending.
And AGENTICITY: Our desire to find a Cause for the Reality we experience.

The Author looks at anecdotal cases of Belief among Scientists, Mystics of Eastern & Western Traditions, Conspiracy Theorists, Political Extremists, and even Extreme Athletes, giving all the benefit of the doubt, before exploring their experiences. He breaks down the activities of Neuronal Synaptic interactions effected by various chemicals, looking at their influences.

The Believing Brain debunks 9/11 Truthers’ theories and parses Belief in The Afterlife and the rationales underlying Liberal vs Conservative Political Theories. The book is that comprehensive.

Shermer is a Skeptic by definition and he doesn’t try to hide his bias, but he does an excellent job of defining those biases and warning of their infection of typical thinking and even of the Scientific Research he so copiously references.

While he may go a little far afield in discussing his examples at times, I still came away convinced of most of his arguments. I found The Believing Brain to be a valuable reference tool for any discussion of the Brain’s processing of Reality. Five Stars. *****

Writers aren't always the best narrators

We were super stoked about this book, but the author's voice is not easy to listen to. Better to buy the book and read it 'old school'. Why authors feel they have the best voice to read their work is a mystery. We switched to the Audible version of "Doc" and the narrator's voice is so awesome and perfect it raises the level of a well written story to amazing heights.