[ THE HAPPINESS OF PURSUIT WHAT NEUROSCIENCE CAN TEACH US ABOUT THE GOOD LIFE BY EDELMAN, SHIMON](AUTHOR)HARDBACK

by Shimon Edelman

When fishing for happiness, catch and release. Remember these seven words—they are the keys to being happy. So says Shimon Edelman, an expert on psychology and the mind. In The Happiness of Pursuit, Edelman offers a fundamental understanding of pleasure and joy via the brain. Using the concept of the mind as a computing device, he unpacks how the human brain is highly active, involved in patterned networks, and constantly learning from experience. As our brains predict the future through pursuit of experience, we are rewarded both in real time and in the long run. Essentially, as Edelman discovers, it’s the journey, rather than the destination, that matters. The idea that cognition is computation—the brain is a machine—is nothing new of course. But, as Edelman argues, the mind is actually a bundle of ongoing computations, essentially, the brain being one of many possible substrates that can support them. Edelman makes the case for these claims by constructing a conceptual toolbox that offers readers a glimpse of the computations underlying the mind’s perception, motivation and emotions, action, memory, thinking, social cognition, learning and language. It is this collection of tools that enables us to discover how and why happiness happens.An informative, accessible, and witty tour of the mind, The Happiness of Pursuit offers insights to a thorough understanding of what minds are, how they relate to each other and to the world, and how we can make the best of it all.

Genres: Nonfiction, Psychology, Science, Philosophy, Neuroscience

Hardcover

First published January 1, 2012

About the author

If one takes the death of Stalin to mark the end of the first, darker half of
the 20th century, I was born just as its second half was getting under way, in the
evil empire that he built and that managed to survive for thirty-odd years after the
emperor kicked the bucket. In 1973, just ahead of the Yom Kippur War, my family
emigrated to Israel, where I graduated from high school. I was drafted into the
army and underwent basic training, then got a B.S. in electrical engineering and
returned to the army for five more years (not counting reserve duty). After
discharge (highest rank attained: major, reserve), I went back to school and
earned an M.Sc. and a Ph.D. in computer science. Since then, I taught and
worked in research at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, at MIT, at the
University of Sussex at Brighton in the UK, and at Cornell University, where I
have been a tenured full professor of psychology since 1999. I have also held
visiting positions at Brown University, at MIT, at Tel Aviv University, and at Korea
University in Seoul.

My long-standing research and teaching interests focus on understanding
the brain/mind – a problem that, in my view, encompasses the entirety of the
human condition. It is because of my desire to understand, both scientifically and
intuitively, what makes us human that my research projects are so diverse: I
have worked on specific problems in visual perception, in robotics and AI, in
motor control, in language acquisition, in memory, and in consciousness, striving
at all times to integrate “extracurricular” interests such as my love of nature and
of literature with the science that I am engaged in. My work has led to over a
hundred refereed publications, three edited volumes, and two monographs,
including Computing the Mind: How the Mind Really Works (Oxford University
Press, 2008). Of these, the last one, The Happiness of Pursuit (Basic Books,
2012) is a trade book, which became a Kirkus Reviews starred selection and
“Must-Read in new nonfiction” when it came out.

Reviews

[Simone Scardapane · Rating 2 out of 5]

Delle 200 pagine di cui è composto questo libro, circa un centinaio mi hanno letteralmente annoiato a morte. Un'attenta analisi ha rivelato che:

* 60 sono pagine infarcite di discussioni tecniche piuttosto vaghe e nebulose, per dimostrare che l'autore è perfettamente esperto in tutto lo scibile delle materie cognitive.

* 10 sono composte da un numero imbarazzante di citazioni a sé stesso per dimostrare il punto precedente.

* 25 sono fatte da continue, e spesso non richieste e completamente inutili, citazioni di Shakespeare ed Omero per dimostrare che l'autore, comunque, ha anche una grande cultura umanistica.

* 5 pagine sono dedicate al divertente tentativo di dare un senso coeso all'intero libro, riallacciandosi al "tema" dell'introduzione, qualunque esso sia (non l'ho ancora capito con molta precisione).

L'unica parte che ho veramente apprezzato è la simpatica finta recensione conclusiva, in cui l'autore stesso commenta scherzosamente i difetti del libro.

[Karina · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a strange and dense book, which follows the twists and turns of the authors reasoning. It introduces quite scientific terms and the explained concepts that stretch the average reader - which allowed me to learn completely new and complicated concepts (others I think went over my head). At times, it seems unnecessarily indulgent in its almost incomprehensible language. Despite the challenge (or maybe because of it?), it was a joy to read. I enjoyed wandering the paths with the author and coming to the same conclusions. Suspending my lack of understanding and then realising that I had understood after all.

[Devero · Rating 2 out of 5]

Il titolo è abbastanza ingannevole. Si tratta di una serie di saggi non propriamente collegati tra di loro, il cui argomento principale è la mente, vista e definita come calcolo e computazione del cervello. Alcune spiegazioni reggono, alcuni paragoni sono buoni, ma sulla parte "felicità" secondo me non ci siamo, la definizione è troppo ambigua.

[Stephanie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Had this book been more appropriately titled, organized, and presented in order to shed light on the true direction of its labors - to conceptualize a wide reaching, computational model for how the human brain functions - then I believe I would have thoroughly enjoyed the pursuit. Instead, it suffers tremendously for misdirecting readers' expectations and not coming remotely close to addressing "What Neuroscience Can Teach Us About The Good Life".

If you wish to enjoy this book, I recommend pretending the title is that of one of Edelman's other works, "Computing the Mind: How the Mind Really Works" and ignoring all hints that there is anything more lurking many pages later lest you be similarly disappointed.

[Tony · Rating 2 out of 5]

It is the pursuit of a goal that gives us pleasure, the fun is in the chase rather than the achievement. This is not a controversial statement. Edelman then tries to show why this is so. The world is largely predictable, and there are advantages in being able to predict events. To predict we must remember and so the brain is configured to allow us to remember and thereby infer what will happen next. So we need to gather experience, set goals, strive to achieve etc because this increases our memory and experiences and allows us better to predict the future. Seems reasonable enough. I think that this is what he's saying. I write "think" because I am not sure. In my opinion he doesn't explain himself well and the annoying witticism are distracting (and not very funny).

[Emily · Rating 2 out of 5]

"Instead of requiring the bewildered reader to mentally juggle Homer, Shakespeare, flying marmots, cameo appearances of movie comedians, lovesick yeast, and whatnot, the author should have staked out a well-defined, unitary cultural reference space to augment the space of scientific concepts that he set out to map."

Took the words out of my mouth.

[Carole Ahmed · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting premise, but more neuroscience than I was expecting. The writing style at first seemed quirky in a fun way, but as I read I found myself skipping to the chapter synopsis, and then skipping big parts of the synopsis until I stopped reading altogether. I think there are other books and authors who talk about the same ideas in a more accessible way.

[Joseph Clampitt · Rating 2 out of 5]

The author reminds me of CS Lewis’s “Surprised by Joy” but without the happy ending. For example, from the last chapter, “It would be nice if happiness, once caught, could be saved for later enjoyment…Alas, storage does not quite work with happiness. Even if the entire situation, not just a few megapixels’ worth of it, were meticulously reconstructed, chances are it would not feel as happy as it once did. I can tell, because I have been there, more than once.”

Made it through over half the book, but chapter 5 on language got me. Lots of jargon and theory-building, with not enough payoff. The title doesn’t really fit this book.

[Nadia Schweiger · Rating 2 out of 5]

To put it simply, I didn’t learn much

[Lee Lloyd · Rating 1 out of 5]

What a thoroughly dreadful, and painful to read book. The author, who is obviously a computer scientist, has become so obsessively enamoured of the computer as a metaphor for the brain, that he feels the need to try and convince the world that it is actually not a metaphor at all, that our brains, as well as actually all matter and energy in the universe, and the universe itself, actually is a computer! It is like some Douglas Adams joke run amok.

I suppose because the author is well aware how monomaniacal he sounds, he constantly assaults the reader with an ill-fitting panoply of allusions, quotes, and half-explained allegories, as if to prove to us that he is so well rounded, that surely his pet theory is the only reasonable answer. The problem, of course, is that his theory is so hopelessly backwards, that it kind of hurts to see the effort he goes to.

To put it as simply as possible, the author seems to utterly miscomprehend that computation, algorithms, and even math itself, are products of the mind, so of course they are going to conform to the workings of the mind. How could the mind ever produce a thought that was not reflective of the mind that produced it? The author seems to have completely inverted the set and subset, without realizing it. However, the fact that the mind can explain things algorithmically, does not mean that algorithms are the totality of the mind. He seems to think that rather than computational theory and algorithms being a subset of human thought, rather computation and algorithms are transcendent properties of the universe, of which the human mind is merely a subset.

At least that seems to be his argument, which obviously left me unconvinced.

[David · Rating 1 out of 5]

I abandoned this book after a couple of chapters: the fuzzy-headed thinking and poor research drive me away.

Here are two examples: in a discussion of "who is wise?" he cites an opinion from the Talmud, and then includes a snarky aside about how listening to women would have been not even considered, and yet Edelman ignored the rest of the discussion, where "he who learns from every one" is the conclusion of the discussion. That is either sloppy scholarship or an attempt to misquote to support his argument.

The other example is more systemic: in attempting to demonstrate the magnitude of the unconscious calculation taking place all the time, he uses an excellent example of lifting a water glass to your mouth; however, another example he uses is that a thrown rock "calculates its trajectory precisely...". That is a subject/object category error- I'm quite surprised that an editor let that through. As we know from Newton, momentum is conserved by all matter unless it's acted on by a force. For all objects above the quantum reference size, their position and momentum can be known to an arbitrary precision, implying that the path of the thrown rock is entirely deterministic. No calculation is performed *by the rock* in this- if you want to look at this as computation, it's performed by the thrower, not the rock.

Edelman used that example repeatedly, and basically asserted its truth rather than actually attempting to prove it (which was probably wise, because the hypothesis is laughable), using this supposed computation by the rock as a building block (pun not intended) for more argument.

Strongly not recommended.

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book. I suspect a lot of other people might find it confused or random, but I felt like I could usually follow along with Edelman's train of thought. I enjoyed the mix of psychology, computer science and philosophy; I especially liked the references to classical literature (Shakespeare, Homer) mixed in with seventies science fiction (PKDick, UKLeGuinn). Definitely want to read more from this guy, a smart, cool, and funny mix of Russian, Israeli, and American.

[Boris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful, insightful, deeply scientific, and philosophically entertaining.
Instead of reading spiritualistic recipes written by self appointed spiritual leaders: mainly teaching you to write impossible to attain quotes on Facebook. First learn how your brain works, what processes your mind has, and then apply that empirical scientific knowledge into your life.

[Cristina · Rating 3 out of 5]

When fishing for happiness, catch and release. Read this in the first 20 pages. Reading the rest proved unnecessary.

[Jane Potter · Rating 1 out of 5]

Has nothing to do with Happiness! Nothing about the pursuit if happiness. Nothing about the good life.

[Mills College Library]

153 E218 2012

[Charmaine Chloe · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn't finish the book. Clearly Edelman knows a lot on neuroscience. Felt a little too technical like a university reading to me. I wanted a leisure read on happiness.

[Greg · Rating 4 out of 5]

A worthwhile read that gives some scientific reasoning as to why the chase is the basis of happiness, not the destination or outcome.

[Natalie Prigoone · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some great insights, but one of those books that after halfway I decided I had had enough.