Reality Check: What Your Mind Knows, But Isn't Telling You

by David L. Weiner

What is reality? Each of us has a "virtual reality map" imprinted on our brains, which consists of our individual ideologies, opinions, attitudes, values, and beliefs that we've built up over the years. But what if you learned that your reality map was distorted or limited? In Reality Check, David L. Weiner takes us on an entertaining romp through many odd and interesting new findings in various scientific fields - from neurobiology to physics and genetics, describing how difficult it is for these findings to sink in and impact our perspectives. One of the most fascinating topics that Weiner discusses is what neuroscience has found out about certain apelike mechanisms in our brains. These ancient vestiges of evolution can cause turmoil if we don't meet their primitive expectations, and their penchant for pecking order and status can create far-out realities that we think are absolutely true. By opening our minds to what science has discovered about our realities, and what it still considers to be mysteries, we can gain valuable insights and tools for improving the quality of our lives.The fresh and surprising information in this book has ramifications for parents, managers, educators, and everyone else interested in getting the most out of others and themselves.

Genres: Nonfiction

303 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 2005

Reviews

[Josh · Rating 2 out of 5]

this was a borderline interesting read. as someone w/ a psych degree, i appreciate the way that the author tries to draw attention to the way the brain works in a way that is more easily accessible to the general public, but the book seemed a little scatterbrained. he starts off talking about how the brain can be imagined as a computer processor - 1s & 0s, on or off - which is a great simplified model then moved into how complex it is to make a perform a somewhat simple task (serving a tennis ball). from here, he started talking about "what is consciousness" and theories throughout the ages on the topic, primal drives and mental illnesses / disorders.

everyone's with us on this, right?

now it starts getting weird. he starts on a series of topics about how large the universe is, we can't grasp that fact, the theory of relativity, space travel, how insignificant we are in a cosmic sense, the illusion of time, tries to explain the human genome project and how DNA works, the bogusness of religion and an array of other topics designed to show that nothing we do matters - so we should all stop being dicks and just get along.

sure, DBAD (don't be a dick) is a great philosophy to live by, but in (what i thought was supposed to be) a psych book on the brain... this was definitely not the route i was expecting the book to go.

[Don]

Fills in not all but a lot of the blank spots in the question we all ask ourselves...Who am I and why am I here.