While waiting for the Eaton Center to open so I could get in line to wait for an iPhone (that’s right, waiting to wait), I was catching up on some podcasts. I was listening to a Quirks and Quarks episode from April and Bob McDonald was interviewing Dr. Gary Marcus, the author of Kluge, the Haphazard Construction of the Human Mind. It’s about how the human brain is built by imperfect evolutionary engineering.

If we humans are capable of abstract thought, logical reasoning, and complex language, then how come I can’t find my keys or remember what I did last Friday night?

Dr. Marcus spoke about our brains as marvelous reasoning machine built on top of an unreliable memory system. We have a hard time remembering specifics, but we’re great at making decisions and reasoning things out.

Luckily, we can and do compensate for our lousy and unreliable memories. If we absolutely need to remember to bring something to work, we hang it on the door. Decision making and reasoning overcomes bad memory.

I found it fascinating and I’m going to look for this book.

Here’s a link to the mp3 of the interview.

~ Jason

[Update: July 14th, 11:19am]  I bought the book over the weekend and I’m enjoying it very much.

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