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)

Great book, gets a little dull in the middle

This book compares favorably alongside David Eagleman's "Incognito" and Michael Gazzaniga's "Who's in Charge". In some ways, this book is not quite as great as those two, mostly because it's a little too long, and gets dull toward the middle (but hang on, because it picks back up later).

I give this book 4 stars instead of 5 only because I thought the book was too long. There are a few parts that are a little repetitive. I would have to say, read the other books I mentioned first, especially "Incognito", which has been my favorite book on this topic.

Enjoyable and Educational

I really enjoyed listening and plan to now read the actual printed book. Very enlightening made me want to learn more.

Educational and Entertaining

Instead of just saying that conspiracy theorists are nuts, the author does an outstanding job of explaining how otherwise intelligent, rational people can end up believing things that are either patently false or, at best, highly unlikely. The only reason you should doubt his reasoning would be if you do not believe in the scientific method. If you do, then the his arguments are solid and quite well-explained. If you somehow don't believe in the scientific method, well, I'm not sure what to say about that but you probably won't like this book or much about modern society in general.

My only quibble is that the last few chapters, while interesting, seem incongruous with the rest of the book. This shouldn't stop you from buying the book nor listening to it all of the way through, but it's just a warning in case you find yourself asking what is the point he is trying to make and what does it have to do with the Believing Brain?

A great listen!

What made the experience of listening to The Believing Brain the most enjoyable?

Michael gave logical explanations for some of the most fanciful beliefs. Anyone who considers themselves to be superstitious or, knowingly believes in fanciful ideas should listen to this.

Has The Believing Brain turned you off from other books in this genre?

No, if anything it has encouraged me to listen to more.

What does Michael Shermer bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

I think it was just nice to hear it read by the person who wrote it. He read it well, stressing points where HE wanted to emphasise.

Interesting, but not outstanding

In The Believing Brain Michael Shermer, the founder and editor of Skeptic Magazine, shows the reader how and why we believe. He begins the book with a discussion of religious beliefs, providing a few examples of life-altering religious (or irreligious) experiences, including his own. I found these stories engaging and enjoyed Shermer's philosophical discussion. Then Shermer defines "agenticity"--the tendency to assume patterns have meaning and intention (an outside agent) instead of seeing them as non-intentional or even random events. He describes the cellular mechanics of our brains and why we would have evolved "agenticity," and then provides many examples of how we see patterns even when they don't exist. This part was pretty funny. I enjoyed his examples. Shermer describes how we can become convinced that our own beliefs are accurate and unbiased, how confirmation bias leads to unconsciously ignoring data that contradict our ideas while noticing in minute detail all the examples in which the data confirm our ideas. This leads to a political discussion of liberals versus conservatives versus libertarianism (because, after all, we simply MUST hear about Shermer's libertarian beliefs!). The final third of the book describes the progress of scientific beliefs from world-is-flat to the multi-verse (again, Shermer inserts a commentary about what HE believes, which seemed a small digression from his main point). This third of the book also describes how the scientific method works. I found the final third of the book less interesting than the first two thirds. It seemed a little less organized than the first two parts, but that may have been because my mind was wandering since I was already familiar with the material he covered. In the end, this was a fun and interesting read, but nothing I'm going to read again.

Shermer is well-spoken and therefore did a good job reading his own work. There were a few words that he hesitated on EVERY time (like spectroscopy), but he was mainly a pretty smooth reader.

bummer mc. buzz kill....

so insightful that it makes this world a little less magical... I'm at a loss...

Touches te core of humanity and its conflicts

What is reality? how do we deal with the thinga we cannot understand? how our mind works? This book shade light on how popular theories are born and how they match science . Interesting and enfertaining yet most of all makes one think.

Interesting sometimes, but mostly tedious

Shermer discusses some intriguing psychological concepts regarding belief as a behavior, but I felt he spent far more time describing general ideas than necessary, often due to the book's underdefined scope. Combined with his bland presentation style, I had a difficult time staying engaged with the book for any extended period of time.

Having a tough time getting through this one

The author seems to just assume that any sort of faith is irrational and false. I'm only halfway through but pretty disappointed so far.

What about the facts?

The author should not have read his own book - but - you do get a good idea of who he is. Not impressed. He does however offer good information for keeping more of an open mind. Choosing the events of 9/11 as an example goes against his "look at the facts" statements. Over 1,500 Architects and Engineers looked at the facts and are calling for a new investigation. Research Building 7 and nano-thermite and come to your own conclusions.