Why Choose This Book?: How We Make Decisions (ISBN 0525949828)

Why? Because it's AWESOME!!!:
Read Montague is a G.D. brain science genius! If I were on "Who wants to be a Millionaire?" he'd be my life line! Come on! With a name like READ, he's got to be smart (though it should be "Head" -- have you seen that giant cranium? "It has its own weather system")! He thinks more thoughts by 8am than most of us do all day! How many brain scientists do you know who can do a standing broad jump across an 8 foot conference table? He was the 1981 SEC Decathlon Champ! The guy is a FREAK of nature! Plus, he's the only scientist I know of who has his portrait hanging in the lobby of a top New York hotel. Why Choose This Book? The answer could be because if you don't, Dr. Montague will kick your as* -- but the right answer is because he does a great job of putting neuroscience into layman's terms so you and I can understand it better.

Where's the neuroscience?:
This book may be fine for someone who does not know much about information theory or standard cognitive psychology, but it was disappointing for me, because Montague is a talented neuroscientist with some great discoveries under his belt, and I wanted a description of the neuroscience "value added." Instead, it is a very general book for the novice, and very rarely addresses what is really new--the neuroscientific evidence on how brains synthesize diverse pieces of information to come to a single decision. There is a way to be both popular, highly informative, and accurate. Montague has not found the way. He has no qualms about saying things that are either obviously false. Obvious: "So choice is about relative value, and relative valuation arose because life runs on batteries, energy is limited, and there's no free lunch." (p. 225) Obviously false: "Efficiency = the best long-term returns from the least immediate investment." (p. 18). Indeed, so much of what he says in this book is obvious that I often found myself bored and distracted. On page 103, Montague describes the neural mechanism that effects the integration of disparate signals concerning the value of various actions. However, there is absolutely no attempt to describe the neural processes involved. I understand that the biochemistry of the brain is complex, but it would still be nice to have a chapter on basic brain structure, a second on signaling, etc. The material in this section should be heavily diagramed, and perhaps even a simple equation or two illustrating the real neural processes involved in choice. Montague is obviously afraid that if he goes to deeply in the material, he will lose the reader, or the reader's attention. But, this is not necessarily the case. It is possible to be accurate, deep, and challenging without losing the lay reader. Instead of doing what he knows best, Montague touches lightly on a half a dozen subjects far from his expertise, and he sometimes makes serious mistakes. Thus, his treatment of fairness in the ultimatum game (chapter 6) explains that humans value fairness because our hunter-gatherer forbears lived in societies characterized by tit-for-tat, so all cooperation was "iterated exchange." Now, there is a large literature on the moral structure of early human societies, and while this is one view of the situation, is contradicted by many papers and books written in the past fifteen years. Personally, I think it is dead wrong.

The science of "what was he thinking?!":
Montague makes connections in this book that I have not read elsewhere. He postulates that the drive to conserve energy -- to be efficient -- is what drives all living things. He then carries this notion into brain science. He presents that we compress and encode information as a means for being efficient. That is at once extraordinarily helpful and a source of bad decisions. In order for "efficient" concepts to have purposeful import in an external, physical reality, they have to be decoded. I love the example he gives of printing instructions for, and a flat-relief model of, origami. The information is there to create a paper crane, let's say. But, when given to his dog, he just licks it and walks away. It takes more than a mere conveyance of information. It takes an ability to model that information. Montague also goes on an interesting exposition of how goals set up by the human brain can veto more logical and sound goals. Neurochemically, dopamine can become associated with some ideas. Therefore, their pursuit takes high priority. The Heaven's Gate cult demonstrates that this is not always a good thing. In fact, there are so many things going on which contaminate one's ability to make sound decisions and Montague goes deeply into some of them. It is a fascinating journey. But, by the end of the book, I'm not sure that I was left with anything other than the idea that we are all more or less sleepwalking. Actually, that was the reason why I picked up the book. It's more of a scientific explanation as to why people make stupid decisions.

Informative; 3.5 Stars:
This is a informative book on decision making by the human brain. The author is a leader in this field who has made several notable contributions to the literature. Montague's basic theme is that convergence of experiments from and perspectives of several different disciplines, including neurophysiology, psychology, economics, and computer science, is generating considerable insight into human decision making and goal directed behaviors. I'm familiar with some of the primary literature in this area and I find that Montague does a good job of presenting the facts. Quite a bit of the discussion reflects Montague's research interests. Montague begins in a somewhat surprising place, the efficiency of the brain. Most people who have thought about this issue tend to regard the brain as something of a kludge; slow, inefficient, and jerry-rigged by evolutionary compromises. Montague argues well that this impression is not correct. Rapid processing can be purchased only at the cost of high energy expenditure. Montague argues that proportional to energy expenditure, mammalian brains are remarkably efficient. Montague then moves on to describe some of the most impressive recent results in neuroscience; the discovery of the role of dopamine signaling in reinforcement learning. This discovery represented a remarkable convergence of theory and experimental results. Montague explains this phenomenon well and discusses how this phylogenetically ancient mechanism emerged to respond to basic rewards and was probably coopted to serve more general functions. Montague discusses the closely related topic of valuation and its probable mechanisms and functional circuitry, then concludes with some more speculative discussions of learning and aspects of social behavior including altruism. A recurrent theme of the book is the power of formal computational models to guide experiments and explain phenomena. While Montague is a generally clear writer, this book has some real defects as a general introduction. Montague relies almost entirely on written descriptions of the science. Well designed figures would have greatly enhanced understanding of the science. Similarly, some explanations of the methods used would have enhanced this book. Finally, its surprising that someone so enthusiastic about formal modeling produces a book without a single, even very simple, equation. Very simple equations often capture much more information than many lines of text.

Don't choose this book:
I picked this up because I liked the book flap, which led me to believe it would be similar to Freakomomics -- an attempt to make some interesting concepts accessible to a lay reader. However, I have no idea if the author knows what he's talking about because he is a poor communicator and his analogies made no sense to me. The writing style is not at all compelling or clear, and I found myself rereading passages because I simply couldn't understand what he was trying to get across...and when I finally thought I did, it simply made no sense to me. After two chapters of abstruse writing, I just gave up. Definitely NOT recommended.