The Mind Within the Brain

This book details the science behind decision-making in humans. Understanding how the human decision-making system works has enormous implications for understanding who we are, what we do, and why we make the choices we make. By bringing together the tremendous work that has been done by many scientists researching brains, decision-making, and machines over the last few decades, we can begin to get an understanding of ourselves. In this book, with humor, science, and poetry, David Redish discusses what is known about how brains work, what is known about how we make decisions, and what is known about how that decision-making machinery can break down under certain conditions to explain irrationality, addiction, and other strange behavior.The primary thesis of this book is that humans are animals that make decisions through computations engaged in by a decision-making machine. This book brings together the new technological breakthroughs that have appeared in the last few decades, the new theoretical progress that has been made in the neuroscience of decision-making in the last decade, and new revelations concerning how decision-making systems fail in both human and non-human mammals, to create a unified theory of decision-making and its vulnerabilities.