What do you think?
Rate this book
How to Be Human: The Ultimate Guide to Your Amazing Existence
If you thought you knew who you were, THINK AGAIN.
Did you know that half your DNA isn't human? That somebody, somewhere has exactly the same face? Or that most of your memories are fiction?
What about the fact that you are as hairy as a chimpanzee, various parts of your body don't belong to you, or that you can read other people's minds? Do you really know why you blush, yawn and cry? Why 90 per cent of laughter has nothing to do with humour? Or what will happen to your mind after you die?
You belong to a unique, fascinating and often misunderstood species. How to be Human is your guide to making the most of it.
Did you know that half your DNA isn't human? That somebody, somewhere has exactly the same face? Or that most of your memories are fiction?
What about the fact that you are as hairy as a chimpanzee, various parts of your body don't belong to you, or that you can read other people's minds? Do you really know why you blush, yawn and cry? Why 90 per cent of laughter has nothing to do with humour? Or what will happen to your mind after you die?
You belong to a unique, fascinating and often misunderstood species. How to be Human is your guide to making the most of it.
271 pages, Hardcover
Published September 21, 2017
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews
July 4, 2019
Lots of interesting takeouts in bite-sized chunks. While generally I strongly dislike such structure to any material, this is a lucky exclusion to this rule.
Q:
if you are delusional, can’t concentrate for more than 8 seconds, forget people’s names as soon as you are introduced, and can’t stop thinking about sex or food, congratulations. You have a normal human mind. (c)
Q:
Cognitive doodling
A morbid obsession with death affects around 15 per cent of people, but obsessive thinking in general is quite common. We tend to characterise wandering thoughts as random, or loose chains of association, but if you find your mind constantly meanders back to familiar territory you are not alone. Like cognitive doodling, obsessive or ritualistic thinking might just be a way of occupying the idling mind. However, such thoughts once carried an evolutionary advantage, as they prepared us for dealing with future risk. That would explain why they are often to do with possible threats, such as uncleanliness. (c)
Q:
More than one in ten US college students remember similar imaginary worlds and two-thirds of children under the age of seven have imaginary friends. Nor is the phenomenon the preserve of childhood. Agatha Christie reportedly still spoke to her imaginary companion at the age of seventy, and Kurt Cobain addressed his suicide note to his childhood imaginary friend Boddah. More commonly, adults indulge their imaginations through novels, movies and daydreaming.
Why do we spend an inordinate amount of time immersed in worlds that exist only in our heads? (c)
Q:
Defining imagination is difficult. If it is the ability to transcend the here-and-now and use our minds to travel through time and space and beyond, then that includes everything from daydreaming about unicorns, to visualising an event from last weekend, and figuring out how best to get to a social occasion across town that evening. If you go with that definition, then we are constantly using our imagination. (c)
Q:
Imaginary friends serve all kinds of purposes, from being plain old fun to vehicles to express fears, explore emotions and to run experiments on the mysterious adult world. Psychologists talk about a division of labour between childhood and adulthood. The former is a kind of research and development division, where we can experiment with the world and develop our creative minds unencumbered by worries about survival. The skills we acquire during this period prepare us for adulthood – the production and marketing division.
Imaginary friends may also help children cope with real-life difficulties. Child psychologists have found tantalising evidence that imaginary friends provided some sort of mental support to kids who came from disadvantaged backgrounds, were stuck in the US foster care system or were coping with the extreme stresses of war and conflict.
Some studies also suggest that children with imaginary friends have stronger theory of mind – meaning they are better able to understand and relate to the mental states of other people. (c)
Q:
The brain is one of the most energetically expensive organs in the body, accounting for 20 per cent of calories we burn, despite taking up just 2 per cent of our body mass. Curiously, it burns energy like billy-o regardless of what it is doing. (c)
Q:
Daydreaming network
By studying patterns of activity in the default network, neuroscientists think its job is to daydream. That may sound like a mental luxury, but its purpose is deadly serious. It would make the network the ultimate tool for incorporating lessons learned in the past into our plans for the future. (c)
Q:
We are all collections of memories. (c)
Q:
That is what memory researchers are now starting to realise: memory is what allows us to imagine the future.
The first inkling that this may be the case came out of studies of people with a type of amnesia that destroys their autobiographical memories. These people often struggle to make plans, as if being robbed of their past has also robbed them of their future. (c)
Q:
... home truths about our ancestors, who clearly enjoyed sexual liaisons with Neanderthals... (c)
Q:
Most of us have superstitions, even though we know rationally that they cannot work. Yet superstition is not entirely nonsensical. Our brains are designed to detect patterns and order in our environment and to assume that outcomes are caused by preceding events. Both abilities evolved for good reason. Our ancestors would not have lasted long if they had assumed that a rustling bush was caused by the wind rather than a lion. But this survival adaptation leaves us wide open to misattributing effects to causes, such as a football team winning because they’re wearing lucky underpants. In other words, superstition. (c)
Q:
Why do humans have sex in private? ...
Our innate demand for privacy probably evolved in response to our increasingly complex sexual politics. For a start, women won some control from men by evolving concealed ovulation and continual sexual receptivity to confuse paternity. Then our ancestors did something completely different from other great apes – males and females started sharing parental care. Monogamy was born, and along with it the need to strengthen the pair bond. Privacy may have emerged as a way to increase intimacy.
But as well as strengthening relationships, clandestine mating also makes it easier to get away with infidelity. ...
Another very human trait, envy, may also play a part. Since men can never get enough of it, sex is a precious commodity and therefore best enjoyed covertly to avoid inciting covetousness. Like food in a famine, somebody who has plenty would be wise to eat it in private. A sexual act, even among consenting adults, has a high probability of upsetting someone. Parents or community members may disapprove and for children it can lead to the creation of rival siblings. So perhaps clandestine copulation simply follows the precautionary principle. (c)
Q:
Art is a form of intellectual play, allowing us to explore new horizons in a safe environment. (c)
Q:
... language can influence perception.
Greek, for example, has two words for blue – ghalazio for light blue and ble for dark blue. Greek speakers can discriminate shades of blue faster and more accurately than native English speakers.
Language also affects our sense of space and time. For English speakers, time flows from back to front: we ‘cast our minds back’ and ‘hope for good times ahead’. The direction in which our first language is written can also influence our sense of time, with speakers of Mandarin more likely to think of time running from top to bottom than English speakers. Some peoples, like the Guugu Yimithirr in Australia, don’t have words for relative space, like left and right, but do have terms for north, south, east and west. They tend to be unusually skilled at keeping track of where they are in unfamiliar places. (c)
Q:
Language can even shape your memory. Spanish speakers are worse at remembering who caused an accident than English speakers, perhaps because they tend to use passive phrases like ‘Se rompió el florero’ (‘the vase broke’) that do not specify the person behind the event. To a large extent, you are what you speak. (c)
Q:
Thanks to a Maasai tradition known as osotua – literally, umbilical cord – anyone in need can request aid from anyone else. Anyone who’s asked is obliged to help, often by giving livestock, as long as it doesn’t jeopardise their own survival. (c)
Q:
Tribalism and the discord it engenders are frighteningly easy to induce, as social psychologists have long been aware. More than 40 years ago, the late Henri Tajfel showed that dividing a group of strangers into two teams based on arbitrary criteria such as whether they preferred the paintings of Klee or Kandinsky triggered their tribal instincts. Members of the Kandinsky tribe behaved favourably towards team-mates while treating members of the other team harshly, and vice versa. Since then, many experiments have revealed how the flimsiest and most transient badges of identity can trigger people to divide themselves into ‘us’ and ‘them’ – even the colour of T-shirts randomly assigned by psychology researchers can do it. (c)
Q:
Bands of brothers
Our innate tribalism sometimes leads to something called ‘fusion’, where individual identities are subsumed by the group. An effective way to induce this is ritual: synchronised activities, from liturgical recitation to military goose-stepping, seem to make people more likely to follow orders to be aggressive to others.
Rituals that produce shared suffering, pain and fear are especially good at catalysing fusion, which explains the bizarre and often dangerous initiation ceremonies seen in warrior cultures and university drinking clubs. Intense and terrifying shared experiences have a similar effect. During warfare, groups of soldiers often fuse into ‘bands of brothers’ who are willing to die for one another even if they don’t believe in the cause they are fighting for. (c)
Q:
‘Alice laughed. “There’s no use trying,” she said: “one can’t believe impossible things.”
‘“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”’ In Lewis Carroll’s day, believing impossible things would more than likely have been seen as a sign of mental imbalance. Today, we know that it is quite normal. Six before breakfast is probably about par for the course. (c)
Q:
The world would be a boring place if we all believed the same things. But it would surely be a better one if we all stopped believing in our beliefs quite so strongly. (c)
Q:
Unenviable choice
It seems then as if we are left with the unattractive choice between a continuous self so far removed from everything constituting us that its absence would scarcely be noticeable, and a self that actually consists of components of our mental life, but contains no constant part we could identify with. (c)
Q:
the temporally extended self, which is an awareness of one’s continuity in time. Insight about this can be found in the case of a man known as N.N., who lost the ability to form long-term memories after he had been in an accident. The damage to his brain also left him without foresight. He described trying to imagine his future as ‘like swimming in the middle of a lake. There is nothing there to hold you up or do anything with.’ In losing his past, N.N. had also lost his future. Brain-imaging studies have since confirmed that the same brain systems that underlie our ability to recall past events also allow us to imagine the future. (c)
Q:
Epigenetic markers are chemical tags added to DNA that alter the activity of genes without altering their genetic sequence. They are added to (and removed from) DNA throughout life in response to environmental factors such as diet, stress and pollution. ...
Of course, epigenetic markers could be seen as being just another form of nurture. But the fact that they are etched onto the genome means they are also nature. Our epigenetic profiles are shaped by the environment, which in turn influences the activity of our genes, which in turn shapes our behaviour, and so on in a complex interplay that blurs the old distinction between nature and nurture. (c)
Q:
Evolved randomness?
Epigenetics may be a way for evolution to hedge its bets. Within our genome, there are hundreds of regions where epigenetic patterns appear totally random – they are neither genetically predetermined (nature) nor set by the environment (nurture), and they vary widely from individual to individual. These regions include many key developmental genes. One possible explanation is that the randomness is an evolved feature. Many animals have to survive in a constantly changing environment. Random epigenetic changes produce lots of variation in genetically similar offspring, increasing the chances that some of them will survive. (c)
Q:
Women most dislike their space being invaded from the side, men from the front...
We survive crowds by dehumanizing those around us. We avoid eye contact, wear blank faces and avoid contact. (c)
Q:
Far from being pathological, though, positive illusions are viewed as being a marker of a healthy mind. The only people who appear immune are those with clinical depression, a state known as ‘depressive realism’. Whether they are realists because they are depressed or depressed because they are realists is not clear. (c)
Q:
...if you want to come across as unflappable, adopt a slow and relaxed gait. (c)
Q:
You probably think you will always be in your mother’s heart, and she in yours. And you’d be right – quite literally. After you were born, you probably left tiny bits of yourself inside your mother. And you got stuff from her, too: her cells take up residence in most of your organs, perhaps even your brain. They live there for years, decades even, meddling with your biology and your health. The same is true of your own children and your brothers and sisters.
Sure, your blood, skin, brain and lungs are made up of your own cells, but not entirely. Most of us are walking, talking patchworks of cells, with emissaries from our mother, children or even our siblings infiltrating every part of our bodies. Welcome to the bizarre world of microchimerism. (c)
Q:
Moving marbles... Embodied cognition... Unconscious climbing... Creative posturing. (c)
Q:
... rationality quotient (RQ) ... RQ also measures ‘risk intelligence’, which defines our ability to assess probability. ... RQ ... depends on something called metacognition, which is the ability to assess the validity of your own knowledge. People with high RQ have acquired strategies that boost this self-awareness. One simple approach is to take your intuitive answer to a problem and consider its opposite before coming to the final decision. This helps you develop keen awareness of what you know and don’t know. (c)
Q:
People who are ignorant about something often display preposterous overconfidence in their own abilities. (c)
Q:
Many researchers who work on the mind–body connection think what really matters is having a sense of purpose in life. Having an idea of why we are here and what is important increases our sense of control over events, rendering them less stressful. One study of a three-month meditation retreat found that the physiological benefits correlated with an increased sense of purpose in life. The participants were already keen meditators, so the study gave them lots of time to do something important to them. Simply doing what you love, whether it’s gardening or voluntary work, might have a similar effect on health. (c)
Q:
...realism can be bad for your health. Optimists recover better from medical procedures such as coronary bypass surgery, have healthier immune systems and live longer. ... Just as helpful as taking a rosy view of the future is having a rosy view of yourself. High ‘self-enhancers’ – people who see themselves in a more positive light than others see them – have lower cardiovascular responses to stress and recover faster, as well as lower baseline cortisol levels.
Whatever your natural disposition, you can train yourself to think more positively, and it seems that the more stressed or pessimistic you are to begin with, the better it will work. (c)
Q:
... a gnawing suspicion that Sir Oliver had been a few envelopes short of a stationery set. (c)
Q:
Many families of HERVs seem to be important in normal brain function....
Taking control
Viral DNA that has infiltrated human eggs and sperm – and so can be passed down the generations – does not only form genes. These HERVs, as they are called ... can also play a role in regulating the expression of other genes. Promoters are DNA sequences that help to activate or repress the expression of genes. Of 2,000 promoters from the human genome, nearly a quarter have been shown to contain viral elements. Even an important protein such as beta-globin, one of the main constituents of the oxygen-carrying molecule haemoglobin, is partly controlled by a retroviral fragment. (c)
Q:
...the median artery is present in human embryos but according to textbooks it normally dwindles and vanishes around the eighth week of pregnancy. An increasing number of adults now have a median artery, up from 10 per cent at the beginning of the twentieth century to 30 per cent at the end. Over the same period, a section of the aorta lost a branch that helps supply the thyroid gland. (c)
Q:
A major component of true friendship is behavioural synchrony – friends must be in the same place at the same time to establish and maintain a relationship. Endorphins seem to promote friendship by making synchrony feel good. (c)
Q:
Falling fertility rates around the globe mean a growing percentage of people are firstborns. We may be heading for a world where fat, stroke-prone, conservatives are in the majority. (c)
Q:
If anyone ever accuses you of getting emotional, you can comfort yourself that emotions push us to act, and without them we’d never get anything done and society wouldn’t function. (c)
Q:
The word nostalgia – from the Greek nostos, to return home, and algos, pain – was coined by medical student Johannes Hofer in 1688, to describe a disorder observed in homesick Swiss mercenaries stationed in Italy and France. Hofer saw nostalgia as a disease whose symptoms included weeping, fainting, fever and heart palpitations. He advised treating it with laxatives or narcotics, bloodletting or – if nothing else worked – by sending the soldiers home. (c)
Q:
humans can be seen as members of an elite club of species in which adulthood has become so long and complicated that it can no longer all be given over to breeding. Just like long-sightedness and inelastic skin, the menopause now appears to be a coordinated, controlled process. Recent research suggests that it is not a meandering, stumbling deterioration but a neatly executed event that is a key part of the developmental programme of middle age. It liberates women and their partners from the unremitting demands of producing children, and gives them time to do what middle-aged people do best – live long and pamper. (c)
Q:
Don’t linger too long
Excessive conscientiousness also gets in the way. Adults are better than children at devising and sticking to practice regimes, but these can backfire. Left to their own devices, most adults segment their sessions into blocks. When learning salsa dancing, for instance, they may work on a specific move until they feel they have mastered it, then move on to another. The approach may bring rapid improvements at first, but a host of studies have found that it is less effective overall.
Instead, you’d do better to take a carousel approach, rotating quickly through the different skills to be practised without lingering too long on each one. Although the reason is unclear, it seems that jumping between skills makes your mind work a little harder when applying what you’ve learned, helping you to retain the knowledge in the long term...(c)
Q:
Dressing up for a date can really pay off. Scientists at Sweden’s Uppsala University took pictures of women wearing three different outfits: a dowdy ensemble, their everyday clothes and their glad rags. The women kept their expressions neutral and only their faces appeared in the photos. Asked to rate the attractiveness of the photos, a panel of men consistently chose pictures of the women in their finery, even though the clothes were not visible. It seems that women unconsciously project feelings about their appearance into their facial expressions. (c)
Q:
So perhaps what parents mistake for hyperactivity at parties is just sugar-fuelled kids concentrating on having fun. (c)
Q:
if you are delusional, can’t concentrate for more than 8 seconds, forget people’s names as soon as you are introduced, and can’t stop thinking about sex or food, congratulations. You have a normal human mind. (c)
Q:
Cognitive doodling
A morbid obsession with death affects around 15 per cent of people, but obsessive thinking in general is quite common. We tend to characterise wandering thoughts as random, or loose chains of association, but if you find your mind constantly meanders back to familiar territory you are not alone. Like cognitive doodling, obsessive or ritualistic thinking might just be a way of occupying the idling mind. However, such thoughts once carried an evolutionary advantage, as they prepared us for dealing with future risk. That would explain why they are often to do with possible threats, such as uncleanliness. (c)
Q:
More than one in ten US college students remember similar imaginary worlds and two-thirds of children under the age of seven have imaginary friends. Nor is the phenomenon the preserve of childhood. Agatha Christie reportedly still spoke to her imaginary companion at the age of seventy, and Kurt Cobain addressed his suicide note to his childhood imaginary friend Boddah. More commonly, adults indulge their imaginations through novels, movies and daydreaming.
Why do we spend an inordinate amount of time immersed in worlds that exist only in our heads? (c)
Q:
Defining imagination is difficult. If it is the ability to transcend the here-and-now and use our minds to travel through time and space and beyond, then that includes everything from daydreaming about unicorns, to visualising an event from last weekend, and figuring out how best to get to a social occasion across town that evening. If you go with that definition, then we are constantly using our imagination. (c)
Q:
Imaginary friends serve all kinds of purposes, from being plain old fun to vehicles to express fears, explore emotions and to run experiments on the mysterious adult world. Psychologists talk about a division of labour between childhood and adulthood. The former is a kind of research and development division, where we can experiment with the world and develop our creative minds unencumbered by worries about survival. The skills we acquire during this period prepare us for adulthood – the production and marketing division.
Imaginary friends may also help children cope with real-life difficulties. Child psychologists have found tantalising evidence that imaginary friends provided some sort of mental support to kids who came from disadvantaged backgrounds, were stuck in the US foster care system or were coping with the extreme stresses of war and conflict.
Some studies also suggest that children with imaginary friends have stronger theory of mind – meaning they are better able to understand and relate to the mental states of other people. (c)
Q:
The brain is one of the most energetically expensive organs in the body, accounting for 20 per cent of calories we burn, despite taking up just 2 per cent of our body mass. Curiously, it burns energy like billy-o regardless of what it is doing. (c)
Q:
Daydreaming network
By studying patterns of activity in the default network, neuroscientists think its job is to daydream. That may sound like a mental luxury, but its purpose is deadly serious. It would make the network the ultimate tool for incorporating lessons learned in the past into our plans for the future. (c)
Q:
We are all collections of memories. (c)
Q:
That is what memory researchers are now starting to realise: memory is what allows us to imagine the future.
The first inkling that this may be the case came out of studies of people with a type of amnesia that destroys their autobiographical memories. These people often struggle to make plans, as if being robbed of their past has also robbed them of their future. (c)
Q:
... home truths about our ancestors, who clearly enjoyed sexual liaisons with Neanderthals... (c)
Q:
Most of us have superstitions, even though we know rationally that they cannot work. Yet superstition is not entirely nonsensical. Our brains are designed to detect patterns and order in our environment and to assume that outcomes are caused by preceding events. Both abilities evolved for good reason. Our ancestors would not have lasted long if they had assumed that a rustling bush was caused by the wind rather than a lion. But this survival adaptation leaves us wide open to misattributing effects to causes, such as a football team winning because they’re wearing lucky underpants. In other words, superstition. (c)
Q:
Why do humans have sex in private? ...
Our innate demand for privacy probably evolved in response to our increasingly complex sexual politics. For a start, women won some control from men by evolving concealed ovulation and continual sexual receptivity to confuse paternity. Then our ancestors did something completely different from other great apes – males and females started sharing parental care. Monogamy was born, and along with it the need to strengthen the pair bond. Privacy may have emerged as a way to increase intimacy.
But as well as strengthening relationships, clandestine mating also makes it easier to get away with infidelity. ...
Another very human trait, envy, may also play a part. Since men can never get enough of it, sex is a precious commodity and therefore best enjoyed covertly to avoid inciting covetousness. Like food in a famine, somebody who has plenty would be wise to eat it in private. A sexual act, even among consenting adults, has a high probability of upsetting someone. Parents or community members may disapprove and for children it can lead to the creation of rival siblings. So perhaps clandestine copulation simply follows the precautionary principle. (c)
Q:
Art is a form of intellectual play, allowing us to explore new horizons in a safe environment. (c)
Q:
... language can influence perception.
Greek, for example, has two words for blue – ghalazio for light blue and ble for dark blue. Greek speakers can discriminate shades of blue faster and more accurately than native English speakers.
Language also affects our sense of space and time. For English speakers, time flows from back to front: we ‘cast our minds back’ and ‘hope for good times ahead’. The direction in which our first language is written can also influence our sense of time, with speakers of Mandarin more likely to think of time running from top to bottom than English speakers. Some peoples, like the Guugu Yimithirr in Australia, don’t have words for relative space, like left and right, but do have terms for north, south, east and west. They tend to be unusually skilled at keeping track of where they are in unfamiliar places. (c)
Q:
Language can even shape your memory. Spanish speakers are worse at remembering who caused an accident than English speakers, perhaps because they tend to use passive phrases like ‘Se rompió el florero’ (‘the vase broke’) that do not specify the person behind the event. To a large extent, you are what you speak. (c)
Q:
Thanks to a Maasai tradition known as osotua – literally, umbilical cord – anyone in need can request aid from anyone else. Anyone who’s asked is obliged to help, often by giving livestock, as long as it doesn’t jeopardise their own survival. (c)
Q:
Tribalism and the discord it engenders are frighteningly easy to induce, as social psychologists have long been aware. More than 40 years ago, the late Henri Tajfel showed that dividing a group of strangers into two teams based on arbitrary criteria such as whether they preferred the paintings of Klee or Kandinsky triggered their tribal instincts. Members of the Kandinsky tribe behaved favourably towards team-mates while treating members of the other team harshly, and vice versa. Since then, many experiments have revealed how the flimsiest and most transient badges of identity can trigger people to divide themselves into ‘us’ and ‘them’ – even the colour of T-shirts randomly assigned by psychology researchers can do it. (c)
Q:
Bands of brothers
Our innate tribalism sometimes leads to something called ‘fusion’, where individual identities are subsumed by the group. An effective way to induce this is ritual: synchronised activities, from liturgical recitation to military goose-stepping, seem to make people more likely to follow orders to be aggressive to others.
Rituals that produce shared suffering, pain and fear are especially good at catalysing fusion, which explains the bizarre and often dangerous initiation ceremonies seen in warrior cultures and university drinking clubs. Intense and terrifying shared experiences have a similar effect. During warfare, groups of soldiers often fuse into ‘bands of brothers’ who are willing to die for one another even if they don’t believe in the cause they are fighting for. (c)
Q:
‘Alice laughed. “There’s no use trying,” she said: “one can’t believe impossible things.”
‘“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”’ In Lewis Carroll’s day, believing impossible things would more than likely have been seen as a sign of mental imbalance. Today, we know that it is quite normal. Six before breakfast is probably about par for the course. (c)
Q:
The world would be a boring place if we all believed the same things. But it would surely be a better one if we all stopped believing in our beliefs quite so strongly. (c)
Q:
Unenviable choice
It seems then as if we are left with the unattractive choice between a continuous self so far removed from everything constituting us that its absence would scarcely be noticeable, and a self that actually consists of components of our mental life, but contains no constant part we could identify with. (c)
Q:
the temporally extended self, which is an awareness of one’s continuity in time. Insight about this can be found in the case of a man known as N.N., who lost the ability to form long-term memories after he had been in an accident. The damage to his brain also left him without foresight. He described trying to imagine his future as ‘like swimming in the middle of a lake. There is nothing there to hold you up or do anything with.’ In losing his past, N.N. had also lost his future. Brain-imaging studies have since confirmed that the same brain systems that underlie our ability to recall past events also allow us to imagine the future. (c)
Q:
Epigenetic markers are chemical tags added to DNA that alter the activity of genes without altering their genetic sequence. They are added to (and removed from) DNA throughout life in response to environmental factors such as diet, stress and pollution. ...
Of course, epigenetic markers could be seen as being just another form of nurture. But the fact that they are etched onto the genome means they are also nature. Our epigenetic profiles are shaped by the environment, which in turn influences the activity of our genes, which in turn shapes our behaviour, and so on in a complex interplay that blurs the old distinction between nature and nurture. (c)
Q:
Evolved randomness?
Epigenetics may be a way for evolution to hedge its bets. Within our genome, there are hundreds of regions where epigenetic patterns appear totally random – they are neither genetically predetermined (nature) nor set by the environment (nurture), and they vary widely from individual to individual. These regions include many key developmental genes. One possible explanation is that the randomness is an evolved feature. Many animals have to survive in a constantly changing environment. Random epigenetic changes produce lots of variation in genetically similar offspring, increasing the chances that some of them will survive. (c)
Q:
Women most dislike their space being invaded from the side, men from the front...
We survive crowds by dehumanizing those around us. We avoid eye contact, wear blank faces and avoid contact. (c)
Q:
Far from being pathological, though, positive illusions are viewed as being a marker of a healthy mind. The only people who appear immune are those with clinical depression, a state known as ‘depressive realism’. Whether they are realists because they are depressed or depressed because they are realists is not clear. (c)
Q:
...if you want to come across as unflappable, adopt a slow and relaxed gait. (c)
Q:
You probably think you will always be in your mother’s heart, and she in yours. And you’d be right – quite literally. After you were born, you probably left tiny bits of yourself inside your mother. And you got stuff from her, too: her cells take up residence in most of your organs, perhaps even your brain. They live there for years, decades even, meddling with your biology and your health. The same is true of your own children and your brothers and sisters.
Sure, your blood, skin, brain and lungs are made up of your own cells, but not entirely. Most of us are walking, talking patchworks of cells, with emissaries from our mother, children or even our siblings infiltrating every part of our bodies. Welcome to the bizarre world of microchimerism. (c)
Q:
Moving marbles... Embodied cognition... Unconscious climbing... Creative posturing. (c)
Q:
... rationality quotient (RQ) ... RQ also measures ‘risk intelligence’, which defines our ability to assess probability. ... RQ ... depends on something called metacognition, which is the ability to assess the validity of your own knowledge. People with high RQ have acquired strategies that boost this self-awareness. One simple approach is to take your intuitive answer to a problem and consider its opposite before coming to the final decision. This helps you develop keen awareness of what you know and don’t know. (c)
Q:
People who are ignorant about something often display preposterous overconfidence in their own abilities. (c)
Q:
Many researchers who work on the mind–body connection think what really matters is having a sense of purpose in life. Having an idea of why we are here and what is important increases our sense of control over events, rendering them less stressful. One study of a three-month meditation retreat found that the physiological benefits correlated with an increased sense of purpose in life. The participants were already keen meditators, so the study gave them lots of time to do something important to them. Simply doing what you love, whether it’s gardening or voluntary work, might have a similar effect on health. (c)
Q:
...realism can be bad for your health. Optimists recover better from medical procedures such as coronary bypass surgery, have healthier immune systems and live longer. ... Just as helpful as taking a rosy view of the future is having a rosy view of yourself. High ‘self-enhancers’ – people who see themselves in a more positive light than others see them – have lower cardiovascular responses to stress and recover faster, as well as lower baseline cortisol levels.
Whatever your natural disposition, you can train yourself to think more positively, and it seems that the more stressed or pessimistic you are to begin with, the better it will work. (c)
Q:
... a gnawing suspicion that Sir Oliver had been a few envelopes short of a stationery set. (c)
Q:
Many families of HERVs seem to be important in normal brain function....
Taking control
Viral DNA that has infiltrated human eggs and sperm – and so can be passed down the generations – does not only form genes. These HERVs, as they are called ... can also play a role in regulating the expression of other genes. Promoters are DNA sequences that help to activate or repress the expression of genes. Of 2,000 promoters from the human genome, nearly a quarter have been shown to contain viral elements. Even an important protein such as beta-globin, one of the main constituents of the oxygen-carrying molecule haemoglobin, is partly controlled by a retroviral fragment. (c)
Q:
...the median artery is present in human embryos but according to textbooks it normally dwindles and vanishes around the eighth week of pregnancy. An increasing number of adults now have a median artery, up from 10 per cent at the beginning of the twentieth century to 30 per cent at the end. Over the same period, a section of the aorta lost a branch that helps supply the thyroid gland. (c)
Q:
A major component of true friendship is behavioural synchrony – friends must be in the same place at the same time to establish and maintain a relationship. Endorphins seem to promote friendship by making synchrony feel good. (c)
Q:
Falling fertility rates around the globe mean a growing percentage of people are firstborns. We may be heading for a world where fat, stroke-prone, conservatives are in the majority. (c)
Q:
If anyone ever accuses you of getting emotional, you can comfort yourself that emotions push us to act, and without them we’d never get anything done and society wouldn’t function. (c)
Q:
The word nostalgia – from the Greek nostos, to return home, and algos, pain – was coined by medical student Johannes Hofer in 1688, to describe a disorder observed in homesick Swiss mercenaries stationed in Italy and France. Hofer saw nostalgia as a disease whose symptoms included weeping, fainting, fever and heart palpitations. He advised treating it with laxatives or narcotics, bloodletting or – if nothing else worked – by sending the soldiers home. (c)
Q:
humans can be seen as members of an elite club of species in which adulthood has become so long and complicated that it can no longer all be given over to breeding. Just like long-sightedness and inelastic skin, the menopause now appears to be a coordinated, controlled process. Recent research suggests that it is not a meandering, stumbling deterioration but a neatly executed event that is a key part of the developmental programme of middle age. It liberates women and their partners from the unremitting demands of producing children, and gives them time to do what middle-aged people do best – live long and pamper. (c)
Q:
Don’t linger too long
Excessive conscientiousness also gets in the way. Adults are better than children at devising and sticking to practice regimes, but these can backfire. Left to their own devices, most adults segment their sessions into blocks. When learning salsa dancing, for instance, they may work on a specific move until they feel they have mastered it, then move on to another. The approach may bring rapid improvements at first, but a host of studies have found that it is less effective overall.
Instead, you’d do better to take a carousel approach, rotating quickly through the different skills to be practised without lingering too long on each one. Although the reason is unclear, it seems that jumping between skills makes your mind work a little harder when applying what you’ve learned, helping you to retain the knowledge in the long term...(c)
Q:
Dressing up for a date can really pay off. Scientists at Sweden’s Uppsala University took pictures of women wearing three different outfits: a dowdy ensemble, their everyday clothes and their glad rags. The women kept their expressions neutral and only their faces appeared in the photos. Asked to rate the attractiveness of the photos, a panel of men consistently chose pictures of the women in their finery, even though the clothes were not visible. It seems that women unconsciously project feelings about their appearance into their facial expressions. (c)
Q:
So perhaps what parents mistake for hyperactivity at parties is just sugar-fuelled kids concentrating on having fun. (c)
January 24, 2018
How to be Human is officially the ultimate learning experience. Think textbook, but you’ll actually want to read it. Mind-blowing is perhaps the easiest way to describe the adventure that is this book. The sheer level of expertise, evident through the meticulous research and many contributing writers (each specialists in their field) make it sexy. New Scientist has done a great job of compiling their best articles on human nature, biology and society into a single, beautiful collection.
Learning has never looked this good, seriously. Each chapter features articles concerning a wide range of topics from why our minds wonder, to the pheromones that make us attractive to others, the reason we form habits, and why we show emotions. Ever wondered why we cry, dream, lie or show empathy? Read this and find out. Similarly, prepare to discover the working behind introverts and extroverts, and the subtle differences in brain mechanics and chemistry between the genders. Basically, human beings are extraordinarily complex beings riddled with mysteries. Yet this book exposes myths about society, explains social aspects you’ve always wondered about, and expertly makes sense of previously unknown and oft-pondered questions of what makes us us. For every random question you’ve ever wondered about your brain and body – including those deep shower thoughts – here is an answer.
Mesmerizing facts and information aside, the style of the writing in How to be Human is equally attractive. Filled with witty banter and sly humour, the writers certainly make facts fun.
Go on, learn something, demystify your life, and impress (or annoy, there’s a thin line) others with a myriad facts about why and how we do what we do.
How to be Human by New Scientist is published by Hachette Books, and is available in South Africa from Jonathan Ball Publishers.
Learning has never looked this good, seriously. Each chapter features articles concerning a wide range of topics from why our minds wonder, to the pheromones that make us attractive to others, the reason we form habits, and why we show emotions. Ever wondered why we cry, dream, lie or show empathy? Read this and find out. Similarly, prepare to discover the working behind introverts and extroverts, and the subtle differences in brain mechanics and chemistry between the genders. Basically, human beings are extraordinarily complex beings riddled with mysteries. Yet this book exposes myths about society, explains social aspects you’ve always wondered about, and expertly makes sense of previously unknown and oft-pondered questions of what makes us us. For every random question you’ve ever wondered about your brain and body – including those deep shower thoughts – here is an answer.
Mesmerizing facts and information aside, the style of the writing in How to be Human is equally attractive. Filled with witty banter and sly humour, the writers certainly make facts fun.
Go on, learn something, demystify your life, and impress (or annoy, there’s a thin line) others with a myriad facts about why and how we do what we do.
How to be Human by New Scientist is published by Hachette Books, and is available in South Africa from Jonathan Ball Publishers.
May 31, 2020
Η γνώμη μου είχε σχηματιστεί ήδη από τις πρώτες σελίδες. Κάθε σελίδα και μία καινούργια ουσιαστική πληροφορία αυτό το βιβλίο .Είχα πολύ καιρό να διαβάσω εκλαϊκευμένη επιστήμη και αυτό το comeback είναι ιδιαιτέρως ευχάριστο για μένα .
Από την ιστορία και τη σημειολογία φτάνει μέχρι την ψυχολογία και τη βιολογία ,καθιστώντας το βιβλίο απολαυστικό ,λίαν εποικοδομητικό και page turner εννοείται .
Ως άνθρωπος που αγαπά τις ξένες γλώσσες πολλά σημεία του βιβλίου με βρίσκουν απολύτως σύμφωνη για το πώς η κάθε γλώσσα επηρεάζει την προσωπικότητά μας και την αντίληψή μας για το περιβάλλον που βρισκόμαστε.
Πιστεύω ότι όποιος θέλει να ανακαλύψει πτυχές του εαυτού του και ψάχνει ένα βιβλίο αυτοβελτίωσης ,δε θα το βρει εδώ . Αυτό το βιβλίο εξηγεί με πολύ κατανοητό τρόπο το πώς λειτουργούν οι μηχανισμοί της ανθρώπινης φύσης και πώς αυτοί αλληλεπιδρούν με τον κοινωνικό περίγυρο.
Όποιος εργάζεται σε ένα περιβάλλον που έχει να κάνει με την επαφή με τον κόσμο ,κρίνω απαραίτητο να διαβάσει το "how to be human".Δε διαβάζεται απνευστί και θέλει το χρόνο του για να αφομοιωθεί.
Από την ιστορία και τη σημειολογία φτάνει μέχρι την ψυχολογία και τη βιολογία ,καθιστώντας το βιβλίο απολαυστικό ,λίαν εποικοδομητικό και page turner εννοείται .
Ως άνθρωπος που αγαπά τις ξένες γλώσσες πολλά σημεία του βιβλίου με βρίσκουν απολύτως σύμφωνη για το πώς η κάθε γλώσσα επηρεάζει την προσωπικότητά μας και την αντίληψή μας για το περιβάλλον που βρισκόμαστε.
Πιστεύω ότι όποιος θέλει να ανακαλύψει πτυχές του εαυτού του και ψάχνει ένα βιβλίο αυτοβελτίωσης ,δε θα το βρει εδώ . Αυτό το βιβλίο εξηγεί με πολύ κατανοητό τρόπο το πώς λειτουργούν οι μηχανισμοί της ανθρώπινης φύσης και πώς αυτοί αλληλεπιδρούν με τον κοινωνικό περίγυρο.
Όποιος εργάζεται σε ένα περιβάλλον που έχει να κάνει με την επαφή με τον κόσμο ,κρίνω απαραίτητο να διαβάσει το "how to be human".Δε διαβάζεται απνευστί και θέλει το χρόνο του για να αφομοιωθεί.
July 10, 2020
A very long sampler menu. At one point, you want to stop and sink your teeth into something, but that's not what this book is about. There are numerous mini-chapters on so many facets about the various aspects of being human, ranging from more-or-less well-established facts to flighty hypotheses to now-debunked analyses.
If you have little idea about biology, this book might be somewhat of an eye-opener for you though I would suggest taking some of them (especially the later chapters) with a pinch of salt. If you have an AP level knowledge, this book has little to offer you.
In the end, lots to nibble at, nothing to chew upon.
If you have little idea about biology, this book might be somewhat of an eye-opener for you though I would suggest taking some of them (especially the later chapters) with a pinch of salt. If you have an AP level knowledge, this book has little to offer you.
In the end, lots to nibble at, nothing to chew upon.
March 27, 2018
A few fascinating few facts but some of it not so much. A little disappointed
November 11, 2017
Avrei voluto titolare questo post, che è anche una recensione, usando la famosa battuta-tormentone pronunciata da Fracchia, la maschera buffa e surreale inventata dall'indimenticabile Paolo Villaggio: "Com’è umano, lei!" Non lo faccio per varie ragioni. Chi legge, potrà desumerle da quanto scriverò.
Questo è uno dei libri più interessanti pubblicati recentemente da quella aggiornata casa editrice inglese che pubblica l'autorevole rivista scientifica settimanale inglese "New Scientist". Sia in versione cartacea che digitale, per niente accademica, una casa editrice ed una rivista decisamente impegnate in una corretta ed aggiornata azione divulgativa delle conoscenza scientifica.
Un folto gruppo di studiosi, scienziati, scrittori e giornalisti hanno creato questo libro che intende essere, come si dice nel sottotilo, una guida aggiornata a questa nostra straordinaria esistenza umana. Il libro l'ho letto in versione Kindle appena ne è stata annunciata l'uscita. Sono rimasto molto colpito dal suo contenuto, il modo con il quale gli autori hanno saputo condensare, in un relativamente ristretto ambito digitale, l'esigenza che ogni giorno esprimono, anche senza rendersene conto, tutti gli uomini.
La espresse bene Socrate secoli fa quando scrisse che "an unexamined life is not worth living". Lo scrivo in inglese, così come lo hanno fatto i curatori del libro. In greco antico suona: "ὁ ... ἀνεξέταστος βίος οὐ βιωτὸς ἀνθρώπῳ" - "una vita senza ricerca non merita di essere vissuta".
La chiave per una corretta comprensione di quello che intendeva Socrate e di quello che hanno inteso fare scrivendo questo libro quelli di "New Scientist" sta tutta in quella parola: "senza ricerca", riferita alla vita. Sono possibili diverse interpretazioni di questo pensiero. Quella che ritengo più vera la riferisco alla "visione" che ognuno di noi dovrebbe avere della propria esistenza.
Il problema che ci si pone, e gli autori del libro lo propongono senza pensare di saper/poter dare tutte le risposte agli interrogativi posti nel libro, è questo: quando dovremmo farci la domanda su quale visione avere della nostra esistenza, all'inizio oppure alla fine di essa?
Chi scrive ha abbastanza anni per chiederselo a pieno diritto e non senza merito, visto la sua condizione di dinosauro. Gli anni sui quali scivola inesorabilmente la nostra esistenza dovrebbero darci occasione per pensarci in maniera da comprendere quello che facciamo.
Non sembra così e lo dichiarano apertamente gli autori i quali scrivono nella presentazione di non avere tutte le risposte alle domande che la nostra esistenza pone. Certamente con il loro lavoro riescono ad evadere molte delle domande che ci poniamo se decidiamo di fare questa "ricerca", di esaminare la nostra vita.
Me ne sono reso conto anche io quando ho affrontato la lettura dei temi proposti, cercando di trovare insieme agli autori le "mie risposte" a quella che è la "mia" condizione umana. Per fare questo, ho sentito fortemente la necessità di avere tra le mani il "corpo del reato", per così definire il libro, l'oggetto nella sua fisicità tanto grafica che narrativa.
Ho avuto modo così di confrontarmi, ancora una volta, con un problema del quale mi sono occupato diverse volte in questi ultimi anni: la differenza tra libro cartaceo e libro digitale. Nella versione digitale questo libro perde gran parte del suo fascino nell'impatto della lettura visiva dei grafici, tabelle e schede. Una lettura fatta sullo schermo. Invece, nelle sue 270 pagine a colori, su carta patinata della elegante edizione rilegata, il libro si offre al lettore come vera guida illuminata per comprendere come sia importante per ogni uomo fare la ricerca di se stessi.
Non smettiamo mai di conoscerci abbastanza. I temi sono infiniti: l'amicizia, la noia, l'immaginazione, il gioco, la fantasia, il sesso, la lingua, il gender, la morale, la nostalgia, la volontà, il disgusto, la creatività, una serie infinita di temi e problemi che si distendono nel nostro DNA che non dobbiamo credere sia del tutto umano. Almeno per un'altra metà, infatti, questa nostra identità rimane misteriosa.
Come non si deve pensare che voi siete unici, ma che qualcuno da qualche parte simile a voi esiste ed ha la nostra stessa faccia, che gran parte dei vostri ricordi sono soltanto storie inventate da noi che siamo ricoperti di peli, come molti animali, che possiamo leggere nella mente degli altri, che ridiamo non solo perchè c'è qualcosa di comico in giro, oppure che non sappiamo di appartenere ad una specie vivente che conosce ben poco di se stessa.
Tutto questo, amico lettore, lo devi leggere sulla pagina stampata, vederlo definito a chiare lettere, il tutto rinchiuso in colorate schede, tabelle e disegni. La lettura digitale sullo schermo rimane una lettura soltanto visiva e liquida, che scorre senza lasciare il segno di cui hai bisogno se vuoi che questa stessa lettura lasci il segno della ricerca alla quale si riferiva Socrate ed alla quale si sono aggangiati con grande successo gli autori di questa straordinaria esperienza editoriale.
Questo è uno dei libri più interessanti pubblicati recentemente da quella aggiornata casa editrice inglese che pubblica l'autorevole rivista scientifica settimanale inglese "New Scientist". Sia in versione cartacea che digitale, per niente accademica, una casa editrice ed una rivista decisamente impegnate in una corretta ed aggiornata azione divulgativa delle conoscenza scientifica.
Un folto gruppo di studiosi, scienziati, scrittori e giornalisti hanno creato questo libro che intende essere, come si dice nel sottotilo, una guida aggiornata a questa nostra straordinaria esistenza umana. Il libro l'ho letto in versione Kindle appena ne è stata annunciata l'uscita. Sono rimasto molto colpito dal suo contenuto, il modo con il quale gli autori hanno saputo condensare, in un relativamente ristretto ambito digitale, l'esigenza che ogni giorno esprimono, anche senza rendersene conto, tutti gli uomini.
La espresse bene Socrate secoli fa quando scrisse che "an unexamined life is not worth living". Lo scrivo in inglese, così come lo hanno fatto i curatori del libro. In greco antico suona: "ὁ ... ἀνεξέταστος βίος οὐ βιωτὸς ἀνθρώπῳ" - "una vita senza ricerca non merita di essere vissuta".
La chiave per una corretta comprensione di quello che intendeva Socrate e di quello che hanno inteso fare scrivendo questo libro quelli di "New Scientist" sta tutta in quella parola: "senza ricerca", riferita alla vita. Sono possibili diverse interpretazioni di questo pensiero. Quella che ritengo più vera la riferisco alla "visione" che ognuno di noi dovrebbe avere della propria esistenza.
Il problema che ci si pone, e gli autori del libro lo propongono senza pensare di saper/poter dare tutte le risposte agli interrogativi posti nel libro, è questo: quando dovremmo farci la domanda su quale visione avere della nostra esistenza, all'inizio oppure alla fine di essa?
Chi scrive ha abbastanza anni per chiederselo a pieno diritto e non senza merito, visto la sua condizione di dinosauro. Gli anni sui quali scivola inesorabilmente la nostra esistenza dovrebbero darci occasione per pensarci in maniera da comprendere quello che facciamo.
Non sembra così e lo dichiarano apertamente gli autori i quali scrivono nella presentazione di non avere tutte le risposte alle domande che la nostra esistenza pone. Certamente con il loro lavoro riescono ad evadere molte delle domande che ci poniamo se decidiamo di fare questa "ricerca", di esaminare la nostra vita.
Me ne sono reso conto anche io quando ho affrontato la lettura dei temi proposti, cercando di trovare insieme agli autori le "mie risposte" a quella che è la "mia" condizione umana. Per fare questo, ho sentito fortemente la necessità di avere tra le mani il "corpo del reato", per così definire il libro, l'oggetto nella sua fisicità tanto grafica che narrativa.
Ho avuto modo così di confrontarmi, ancora una volta, con un problema del quale mi sono occupato diverse volte in questi ultimi anni: la differenza tra libro cartaceo e libro digitale. Nella versione digitale questo libro perde gran parte del suo fascino nell'impatto della lettura visiva dei grafici, tabelle e schede. Una lettura fatta sullo schermo. Invece, nelle sue 270 pagine a colori, su carta patinata della elegante edizione rilegata, il libro si offre al lettore come vera guida illuminata per comprendere come sia importante per ogni uomo fare la ricerca di se stessi.
Non smettiamo mai di conoscerci abbastanza. I temi sono infiniti: l'amicizia, la noia, l'immaginazione, il gioco, la fantasia, il sesso, la lingua, il gender, la morale, la nostalgia, la volontà, il disgusto, la creatività, una serie infinita di temi e problemi che si distendono nel nostro DNA che non dobbiamo credere sia del tutto umano. Almeno per un'altra metà, infatti, questa nostra identità rimane misteriosa.
Come non si deve pensare che voi siete unici, ma che qualcuno da qualche parte simile a voi esiste ed ha la nostra stessa faccia, che gran parte dei vostri ricordi sono soltanto storie inventate da noi che siamo ricoperti di peli, come molti animali, che possiamo leggere nella mente degli altri, che ridiamo non solo perchè c'è qualcosa di comico in giro, oppure che non sappiamo di appartenere ad una specie vivente che conosce ben poco di se stessa.
Tutto questo, amico lettore, lo devi leggere sulla pagina stampata, vederlo definito a chiare lettere, il tutto rinchiuso in colorate schede, tabelle e disegni. La lettura digitale sullo schermo rimane una lettura soltanto visiva e liquida, che scorre senza lasciare il segno di cui hai bisogno se vuoi che questa stessa lettura lasci il segno della ricerca alla quale si riferiva Socrate ed alla quale si sono aggangiati con grande successo gli autori di questa straordinaria esperienza editoriale.
April 22, 2018
Utterly brimming in interesting facts, without reading like a set of bullet points as so many books of this genre often do. Well worth the read but I do have a few issues:
1. It claims monogamy was born in humans because of shared parental investment. Maybe the author just meant that it is the cause of it. If not, then you only need to google primates to see that it is wrong. I am inclined to think the author meant the former, but just in case...
2. It is claimed that epigenetics describes modifications that are etched on your genes and hence are not genes nor environment. If you reset the clock to when you were conceived and ran your life over and over you would turn out different despite having the same genes and environment. This isn't true and people need to stop making this mistake. To take an example, if you add a methyl group to the DNA such that you modify its expression, you are modifying the environment of the genes such that the DNA is getting methylated. It shouldn't be phenome = genome + environment + epigenetics. Epigenetics come under the environment.
3. This is another claim that just misses the point: the sex of an individual is a terrible predictor of behaviour. Wrong. If you want to claim 'behaviour in general', as in, the sum total of all the different things someone does, then that is probably a fair statement to make. But what if I was just looking at one behavioural trait at a time? What about, 'prefers sexual intercourse with women'? You'd get it right most of the time if you tried 'men'. What about someone who plays videogames like Rainbow Six Siege for 10 hours a day? Of course it could be a woman, but 90% of the time, if you guess male, you're going to be right. What about a sleepover where you do each other's hair? Are you really going to guess male? It's certainly possible but would you make a better prediction if you guessed female?
1. It claims monogamy was born in humans because of shared parental investment. Maybe the author just meant that it is the cause of it. If not, then you only need to google primates to see that it is wrong. I am inclined to think the author meant the former, but just in case...
2. It is claimed that epigenetics describes modifications that are etched on your genes and hence are not genes nor environment. If you reset the clock to when you were conceived and ran your life over and over you would turn out different despite having the same genes and environment. This isn't true and people need to stop making this mistake. To take an example, if you add a methyl group to the DNA such that you modify its expression, you are modifying the environment of the genes such that the DNA is getting methylated. It shouldn't be phenome = genome + environment + epigenetics. Epigenetics come under the environment.
3. This is another claim that just misses the point: the sex of an individual is a terrible predictor of behaviour. Wrong. If you want to claim 'behaviour in general', as in, the sum total of all the different things someone does, then that is probably a fair statement to make. But what if I was just looking at one behavioural trait at a time? What about, 'prefers sexual intercourse with women'? You'd get it right most of the time if you tried 'men'. What about someone who plays videogames like Rainbow Six Siege for 10 hours a day? Of course it could be a woman, but 90% of the time, if you guess male, you're going to be right. What about a sleepover where you do each other's hair? Are you really going to guess male? It's certainly possible but would you make a better prediction if you guessed female?
December 4, 2023
randomly stumbled across this in my home library and
god damn
this might be the only article compilation book that i have ever enjoyed
a lot of fun and interesting and useful facts
which i all forgot already ofc
but for example
yeah no i dont remember
ohhhh
now i remember
for example the articles about how physical exercise actually improves the mind and the brain, making you memory and problem-solving skills better (or something like that)
and this actually gave me motivation to try to really build a habit of running every morning
its something that i have been wanting to do for a long time
and this book and also some god awful quotes on instagram before i deleted that app gave me the motivation to actually make it happen
(one of the "quotes" was from mrbeast(lol) who said that he just went to the gym 3 months straight and now it is second nature to him)
anyway im on day 4 wish me luck
god damn
this might be the only article compilation book that i have ever enjoyed
a lot of fun and interesting and useful facts
which i all forgot already ofc
but for example
yeah no i dont remember
ohhhh
now i remember
for example the articles about how physical exercise actually improves the mind and the brain, making you memory and problem-solving skills better (or something like that)
and this actually gave me motivation to try to really build a habit of running every morning
its something that i have been wanting to do for a long time
and this book and also some god awful quotes on instagram before i deleted that app gave me the motivation to actually make it happen
(one of the "quotes" was from mrbeast(lol) who said that he just went to the gym 3 months straight and now it is second nature to him)
anyway im on day 4 wish me luck
January 6, 2018
Do you ever wonder what happens after we die? Or what makes men and women different? Or why teenagers are unfathomably moody? This book holds the key (or at least tries it's hardest to) to human existence.
It is a compelling and fascinating read that concentrates on everything it means to be a human; emotions, sex, development and health. The only real downside is that it reads very much like a school textbook. Yet, irrespective of this I cannot recommend this book enough. It's insightful and genius and rather charming all things considered.
It is a compelling and fascinating read that concentrates on everything it means to be a human; emotions, sex, development and health. The only real downside is that it reads very much like a school textbook. Yet, irrespective of this I cannot recommend this book enough. It's insightful and genius and rather charming all things considered.
May 4, 2022
I sometimes felt like it was difficult to catch the overall ambition in this book. Trying to be (obviously has to be) objective about the beliefs in general? Sometimes some facts given seemed to be too much of personal opinion.
> Religious thoughts hidden, trying to find their ways out of evolutionary realities?
> Usage of informal British words [ glad rays!? :) ]
> Sometimes funny , sometimes jaw dropping very interesting knowledge bits.
Well, not bad at all of course. However somehow lacks something that is expected from this kind of books, something that I am not so sure what it is.
That's why my rating is not a 4.
It is a 3,4
> Religious thoughts hidden, trying to find their ways out of evolutionary realities?
> Usage of informal British words [ glad rays!? :) ]
> Sometimes funny , sometimes jaw dropping very interesting knowledge bits.
Well, not bad at all of course. However somehow lacks something that is expected from this kind of books, something that I am not so sure what it is.
That's why my rating is not a 4.
It is a 3,4
September 7, 2020
Purchase How to be Human here for just $12!
Contains lots of really interesting facts about us humans and why we do, think and feel the way we do. Great content, thoroughly recommended.
Alicia - The Book Grocer
Contains lots of really interesting facts about us humans and why we do, think and feel the way we do. Great content, thoroughly recommended.
Alicia - The Book Grocer
March 1, 2018
This is a well written and illustrated book that answers many questions you might have about being human that you might have thought you would never find an answer to. Would be a good reference for questions children ask or need for school reports.
June 20, 2021
I’m not usually keen on books of this type but I thoroughly enjoyed this one. Chock full of fascinating snippets of information and unexpected facts. Even the most learned of people will discover a few thing they didn’t know before.
December 5, 2021
Super interesting topics but it’s really a sampler and I found I got frustrated at not being able to go more in-depth. Just as I became fascinated, the topic would switch. Fair enough that this cursory look at lots of topics is exactly what the New SCientist was aiming for.
February 20, 2023
This is an amazing compendium of useful and interesting information about (almost) everything that makes us humans. It's nicely separated in easily digestible chapters, which makes great to follow. Highly recommended!
February 8, 2024
Human body, mind, death, relation etc. are so mysterious. This book enlighten me a lot. I was curious to know the whole stuff about human aspect. Our whole life is a riddle, this book of treasure provokes us and also instigates that trigger.
A must read book. Happy reading.
A must read book. Happy reading.
March 23, 2019
I didn't find anything interesting in this book, the information is very shallow and obvious. For the popular science book, there is not enough science in there.
November 10, 2021
Read half. Interesting. Will read rest at some point.
January 18, 2022
There isn't a single thing that have ever crossed my mind that wasn't mentioned in this book.
PHENOMENAL. PERIOD.
PHENOMENAL. PERIOD.
June 7, 2022
really interesting and well-written, i do wish the chapters were longer though.
May 21, 2021
Great book to boost your understanding of our species. Lots of content!
July 26, 2023
This book is an amazing gateway to the human sciences, especially for beginners that are only now delving into the deep worlds of psychology, philosophy, and anthropology.
I read the English version of this book and I was amazed at how fresh and sometimes funny it was while remaining on track and explaining different theories and facts about human evolution and nature easily and compellingly.
If you're a human sciences fiend and you're looking for a deeper look into some parts of the human world from angles you did not expect then I strongly recommend this book.
I read the English version of this book and I was amazed at how fresh and sometimes funny it was while remaining on track and explaining different theories and facts about human evolution and nature easily and compellingly.
If you're a human sciences fiend and you're looking for a deeper look into some parts of the human world from angles you did not expect then I strongly recommend this book.
June 2, 2020
I am interested in topics from natural sciences, but I am not an expert. From that point, popular science books is just what I need, but in all honesty not always doing good with those. Just simple language will not do the trick. If I get bored, I loose focus and slowly also interest and start to look for other book. I need a good story, science book has to swallow me as any good fiction book. And this book did the job. As proof to it - I did note down couple of further reading advices on some of the topics.
August 4, 2020
Extremely interesting. Though the title of the book can be misleading. The book talks about why we are the way we are both biologically and otherwise. It provides evolutionary evidences for a lot of reasons. There are certain things that we already know and this book just reiterates it evidences which makes quite a bit of sense. However, if you're looking for a through and through scientific take, this might not meet your expectations
September 28, 2020
A modern book full of fascinating facts about humans, very interesting stories and history that go a bit deeper than just "simple facts". A lot of subjects I thought I knew at least fairly well turn out to be a lot more complex, like genetics (human chimerism wow).
Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews