HUMANS are idiots – and pointing this out is all the rage. In popular science, humanity’s irrational side is the topic du jour.
It all started with Antonio Damasio’s Descartes’ Error, which demolished the old idea that cold, emotionless rationality is the best way to make decisions. Using numerous neurological case studies, Damasio showed that without gut feelings we are left hopelessly adrift.
The idea that humans sometimes benefit from thinking emotionally rather than rationally has since been seized upon by writers like Malcolm Gladwell in Blink and Jonah Lehrer in The Decisive Moment.
Advertisement
Bozo Sapiens is rooted firmly in this tradition. Written by mother-and-son team Ellen and Michael Kaplan, its thesis is that humans make mistakes – a lot of them. We are seduced by dumb ideas, follow idiotic leaders and delude ourselves about everything from the economy to romantic love.
Armed with sheaves of anecdotes and research, the Kaplans show just how daft even the most intelligent people can be. The writing is delightful: graceful and packed with allusions, switching easily between hilarity and tragedy.
Our frequent mistakes, they argue, are a necessary side effect of our adaptability and inventiveness. Coming up with new ideas is a scattergun process – most will be wrong and we are bad at picking out those that are right. Unless we want to be mindless automata, we are stuck with our stupidity.
This is a familiar idea in science fiction and a rich vein of psychological research. Bozo Sapiens, however, never develops this central idea, and says little about creativity.
While the Kaplans do an excellent job of detailing human stupidity, they do not make any sense of it. The stories, while gripping, are never integrated into an overall picture of how and why we make mistakes. In the end, Bozo Sapiens is hugely entertaining, but unsatisfying.
Bloomsbury
