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Incognito

David Eagleman

290 pages

A mind-bending tour through the hidden neurological machinery that actually runs your life, proving you are not the captain of your own ship.

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What it feels like

Reading this book feels like stepping behind the curtain of your own mind and realizing you aren't the one pulling the levers. It moves at a brisk, conversational clip, trading dense academic jargon for vivid metaphors and startling anecdotes that make complex neuroscience feel like a gripping detective story. The mood is a compelling mix of awe-inspiring and slightly unsettling, as the narrative systematically dismantles the illusion of conscious control. You will find yourself constantly pausing to stare at the wall, reevaluating your own choices, biases, and behaviors. It is an absolute delight for curious readers who love pop-science that fundamentally shifts their perspective, offering a dizzying, humbling, and ultimately fascinating look at the biological machinery running under the hood.

Mood
  • intellectually stimulating
  • awe-inspiring
  • slightly unsettling
Tone
  • conversational
  • inquisitive
  • mind-bending
  • accessible
  • authoritative
Pace
brisk
Themes
the illusion of control · hidden machinery of the mind · biological determinism · the limits of self-knowledge
The writing
Metaphor-rich and highly accessible, using vivid anecdotes to translate dense neurological concepts into engaging storytelling.
The arc
Begins with a comfortable sense of self-awareness and gradually unravels it, leaving the reader in a state of dizzying, humbled awe at their own biology.
Who it's for
Curious armchair philosophers and pop-science fans who love having their fundamental assumptions about human behavior turned upside down.
Content notes
  • discussions of violent crime
  • medical trauma
  • mental illness
  • brain injury

About the book

"This book will shine light on some of the hard-to-reach places in the brain, showing the ways in which we are not the ones driving the boat. Why does the conscious mind know so little? What do visual illusions unmask about the machinery running under the hood? How much of our lives are determined by choices and behaviors that are hard-wired, unconscious, and beyond our control? Do we have any management over who we find gorgeous or repugnant? How is it possible to get angry at yourself: who exactly, is mad at whom? If the drunk Mel Gibson is an anti-Semite and the sober Mel Gibson is authentically apologetic, is there a real Mel Gibson? Why did Supreme Court Justice William Douglas claim that he was able to play football and go hiking, when everyone could see that he was paralyzed after his stroke? Why do people willingly give up their money to banks for Christmas accounts (and why don't monkeys do this)? Why do patients on Parkinson's medications become compulsive gamblers? Why do athletes follow routines, like bouncing the ball three times before taking a free throw? Why did Charles Whitman suddenly kill his family and shoot forty six others from the UT Austin tower, and what did this have to do with his brain? How much of who we are is in the genes, and how much in the environment? Does free will exist or not, and how does that affect our view of blameworthiness and credit? The emerging understanding of the brain drastically changes our view of ourselves, shifting us from an intuitive sense that we are at the center of the operations, to a more sophisticated, illuminating, and wondrous view of the situation"--

Description from Open Library.

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