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The Folly Of Fools: The Logic Of Deceit And Self-Deception In Human Life (2011)

by Robert Trivers(Favorite Author)

3.46 of 5 Votes: 4

languge

English

genre

Nonfiction

publisher

Basic Books

review 1: the weaknesses of this book are all the more frustrating given the potentially highly important target the aims for — an understanding of how biological self-deception leads to problematic errors and biases in our daily existence.three major weaknesses keep this book from reaching its target. first, trivers seems to have a highly inconsistent definition of self-deception and often seems to be developing a theory, not of self deception but of error per se. this is a fairly major problem given that he completely eschews the social sciences (and psychology) which seems much better positioned to offer a useful account of error than does trivers's discipline of evolutionary biology. second, trivers follows his insights from evolutionary biology all the way through to insight... mores on the realms of human behavior (e.g. aviation, war, religion). instead, there are select observations from both realms in isolation, but the connections between these realms are unclear. third, (and i'll be honest this really annoyed me from the beginning) trivers argues with a style that is annoyingly selective and brief. he summarizes extremely complex evidence without any accounting for the quality of that evidence, the wider body of evidence or alternate hypotheses. trivers argues with data-influenced narratives that never feel remotely solid — he covers incredibly wide swaths of conceptual ground in leaps and bounds and creates little confidence that the parts that he skipped over are trivial. consequently, section after section left me with more questions than answers and very little confidence that trivers's preferred answers were accurate.
review 2: Reminded me a lot of The Selfish Gene, by design - it approaches the topic largely from the perspective of evolutionary biology. Unfortunately, I didn't like it nearly as much as The Selfish Gene. It was interesting in parts, but it felt like the topic got muddled up with evolutionary biology in general, felt highly speculative, and I didn't always feel the examples supported his case as much as he meant them too. Interesting at times, a bit tiring for me at others. All in all, it still felt worth finishing. less

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