午夜。平生第二次读不下去一本书。
百无聊赖地重贴之前在Good Read的评论。大可不必理会。
一切安好。只是焦虑下一本的命运。
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Let me make it clear:
1. I think one should be very careful before writing a book and giving it a name such as this one, unless you are pretty darn sure that everyone who might possibly buy your book will fall into all or at least most of the descriptions of "you". An author of books with names like this one obviously poses themselves as superior to the mass so they'd better prove that is the case with what they present in their book - content and delivery. Failing that, they will have to face the possible outcome of looking like a shallow , desperate, attention - seeking fool.
Does everyone fall into the his descriptions of the ignorant you ? Well I'm not sure. "Indeed, it is more likely that a professor of history will know why the Roman Empire fell and what can be learned from it... If the professor tells you how much he or she wishes the Spice Girls would reunite and play on campus, you would be committing logical fallacy if you decided you should maybe rethink your musical taste." Seriously?! Who does that? Are we all 11 years old now? What percentage of the adult population really blindly takes on everything an authority figure claims, regardless of the subject? Well I don't. And I don't consider myself smart because of that. That surely is just common sense most of us posses?
It goes on like this. Many misconceptions McRaney accuses the readers of are so irrelevant and inapplicable to me, that i think it is fair to say that this guy really didn't think his stuff through before he made it public. Is he really that smart? If not, what gives him the right to condescend his readers in such a manner? I've read and recognised humour in scientific books before, if that is humour he is attempting, well I'm lost for appropriate words.
I'm just gonna say it: I think it was pretty unwise of him to give the book this name. It paints him in a very bad light. Tune it down, and come off that high horse of his, this can be an all right compilation of pop psychology blog entries.
2. His delivery throughout the book has the same unpleasant taste. He keeps repeating "you are not so smart". Is it necessary? What goal is he trying to achieve other than antagonising readers and securing an imaginary intellectual gap between himself and us? He keeps on about "your ancestors", but I assume that'll be his ancestors too? It looks like simple lack of sophistication and poor writing skills to me. It really does not hurt to pull the readers to your side every now and then, even if you believe you are much better than us lot. Not to mention that latter point may be very questionable.
3. The ideas he presents need serious scientific back up and detailed explanations on research methodology. There's none of those. He claim all his ideas to be the truth, but are they? Where did he get his truth from, given the fact that he doesn't appear to own any qualifications or professional experience in the field of science? Even if he did, do psychologists claims their research findings to be the absolute truth these days now? I thought science was a subject where new findings are constantly replacing old ones thus no real expert in the world of science shall claim what they know to be THE TRUTH ?
My speculation is that he reads a lot on psychology as he is a self-described psychology nerd. But forgive me for being fussy, some of us may not be happy with just words like "research has shown". There are all sorts of researches done, were they controlled and double blinded? What scale of research are we talking about here? What is the number of subjects involved? These factors greatly affect the value of the final findings.
Some people may say that I'm being awkward here - this is only meant to be a quick pop psychology read. But it's a book after all. This is no blogging. You are educating the mass. You have a responsibility to do it right. And it's important that the mass learn to think critically, especially considering this is a book about thinking. Surely among the 48 entries of misconceptions that repeat itself all too often, the author can afford to cut off the numbers of entries and spend a bit more time digging each one deeper ?
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I think I'm gonna stop at page 157 as I realised I am reading everything he says with this thick glaze of doubt now. Words jump and float and make no sense to me. I may or may not return to this one.
If you want a good version of this sort of books (the ones that correct your misconceptions of things in the field of science), I recommend "Bad Science" by Ben Goldacre.
