“The mind is a system of organs of computation designed by natural selection to solve the problems faced by our evolutionary ancestors in their foraging way of life.”

Books bemoaning how irrational people are have become increasingly popular in recent years. We believe that after a series of sixes a dice is ‘due’ for a different number, or that basketball players can have ‘hot hands’; we are incapable of properly updating Bayesian probabilities, such as when we calculate the likelihood of actually having a disease given a positive test; and when Kahneman asked people whether a young woman active around issues of discrimination and social justice was more likely to be a bank teller or a bank teller active in the feminist movement, they said the second, a logical impossibility.

With such dismal news, one might be forgiven from assuming human intelligence is something to be pitied. For that reason, How the Mind Works is a welcome change. In it, Pinker argues that though we certainly do have inborn biases and weaknesses, many of them make sense from an evolutionary perspective, even providing an evolutionary advantage. Most events do demonstrate reversion to the mean, for example: dice or basketball players might not be due for a change, but weather is. More broadly, Pinker uses the computational theory of the mind to explain human reason, emotion, the senses, consciousness, social relations, humour, and in the final chapter, the meaning of life. It was a finalist for the Pulitzer prize when it was published in 1997.

As with all Pinker books, it is filled with amusing anecdotes, illustrative examples, and incisive analysis. Still, I found it less compelling than his others, though that’s partly due to personal taste rather than inherent quality: I preferred the focus of Blank Slate, which covers some of the same material but with particular emphasis to societal implications, rather than the descriptive approach given here. It also shares significant content with some of his other books, including the Language Instinct and Better Angels. That said, if you’re interested in an overview of the computational theory of the mind, or are hoping to brush up on your knowledge of cognitive psychology, the book is useful and entertaining.