The Mind Is Flat
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The Mind Is Flat
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Narrated by:
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Nick Chater
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By:
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Nick Chater
About this listen
Penguin presents the audiobook edition of The Mind is Flat written and read by Nick Chater.
Most of us assume that our thoughts, desires and behaviour arise from the murky depths of our minds, and, if only we could access this inner world, we could truly understand ourselves. For more than a century, psychologists, psychiatrists and neuroscientists have struggled, using methods from psychotherapy to brain scans, to discover what lies below the surface of our minds.
In a profound reappraisal of how the mind works, pre-eminent behavioural scientist Nick Chater reveals that this entire enterprise is misguided: that we have no mental depths to plumb. Drawing on startling new research in neuroscience, behavioural psychology and perception, The Mind is Flat shows that we have no inner library of beliefs, values and desires lying with us, but instead generate them in the moment, and base them entirely on our past experiences. As the reader discovers - through eye-opening experiments and mind-bending visual examples - we are all characters of our own creation, constantly improvising our behaviour, rather than the playthings of unconscious currents within us.
Boldly original and utterly convincing, The Mind is Flat forces us to reconsider just about everything we thought we knew about ourselves, and shows that the result can be liberating.
©2018 Nick Chater (P)2018 Penguin AudioListeners also enjoyed...
Critic reviews
What listeners say about The Mind Is Flat
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Tom Ayerst
- 23-10-18
Fascinating and thought provoking
The thesis of our minds as relentless improvisors is convincingly argued with much supplementary evidence from research. The conclusion is radical and convincing.
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2 people found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Glyn Williams
- 18-07-18
This book blew my mind*
* But the resultant explosion was disappointingly small.
This book forces us all to reconsider long-standing myths about the mind. Ideas which have been accepted and unchallenged for centuries are dismantled. The dismantling is done with research and evidence.
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3 people found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
- Occam's shaver
- 23-02-19
It seemed to make sense when I listened to it!
It seemed to make sense when I listened to it and chimed with observations I had made and what I believed were long-standing, deeply-held beliefs.
This book needed to be written.
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- Rafal
- 26-07-18
Pros and cons
Good - the book contains a lot of interesting insights. I've learnt a few new things.
Bad - the author decided to read the book himself, which in my opinion was a mistake. He reads too fast and changes speed a lot (a bit like in a real conversation). Even slowing the audiobook down didn't help to make it smooth and engaging. This is probably why I also feel that some sentences could have been much simpler and the individual stories more cohesive.
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4 people found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- pogo
- 28-10-21
Pictures needed
book had pictures for the concepts. audiobook misses those. could be in a separate PDF
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Arild
- 24-05-18
An easily accessible book provoking you to think
Such a nice, well put together book read in just the best voice. Highly recommended!
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Thomasson
- 20-05-18
Brilliant and Entirely Relevant
Author himself as narrator really worked. Animated reading and rich streams of fabulous analogies, I was gripped from start to finish.
A groundbreaking book (another analogy!)...or was it earth shattering?...can't quite decide. ;)
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3 people found this helpful
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- David Kinsella
- 25-08-20
Great Title, Same Rehashed Science Experiments
if you've read one recent book on cognitive science then you've read them all. The book does not feel original at all. I've heard all of these experiments before. I think if you're looking for something different on this topic then look at "A Strange Loop" by Douglas Hofstadter. Perhaps not as accessible, but it feels like every cognitive scientist out there is trying to write a popular book. I mean the author here thinks that the mind has no hidden depths and just adapts as it goes along. Fine. Sounds good. But he then goes on to build it up using many of the exact same experiments that, for example, Bruce Hood uses in his book "The Self Illusion". I suppose if this is your first taste of this subject then you'll get a lot out of it, but for me it was just more of the same with a slightly different starting premise. What's new in this book could probably have been shared in a TED talk presentation.
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2 people found this helpful
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- Oisin Brogan
- 30-07-19
Interesting idea, arguments unconvincing
The central idea is interesting, the experiments in perception fancinating, I finished the book feeling unsatisfied and unconvinced. I found myself again and again waiting for the argument the would link the experiment being discussed to the implied far reaching implications, but it never came. Instead Chater would repeat the conclusion again.
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Overall1 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story1 out of 5 stars
- Blue Fenix
- 21-08-23
Good thesis, verbose and padded with fluff
This should have been a 30 page article, instead int was bloated to full book size by adding verbose prose and repetition to the extreme.
Remember when, as a student, you added toa report to fit the rewuirements of the assigment? this is it.
Read an summary of the book.
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