Explaining Humans: Winner of the Royal Society Science Book Prize 2020

Product Information

To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Millie’s memoir is relatable and original, littered with anecdotes and scientific principles to guide us to a better understanding of what it really means to be human. I think my biggest issue with this book, and why it was so disappointing, is that it just felt marketed wrong. Unfortunately there’s little sign of the wisdom that other autistic authors have brought to the page- this reads more like it was written by someone who knows a great deal of scientific facts (and likes to talk about it), but has little life experience.

I thought I was, since I am the parent of an adult daughter with Asperger's Syndrome and the author is also on the spectrum and only a few years older than my daughter. As a painter this has inspired me to explore in images the mystery of the people, objects and landscapes of foreign lands, people speaking a different language which I have slowly had to learn. The author uses complex (to a lay person like me) analogies about proteins and thermodynamics to explain people but. A short book by a biochemist who proudly flies the flag of her own autism diagnosis, explaining how people work from her point of view. Topics include ‘how to (actually) think outside the box’, ‘how to embrace your weird’ and ‘how to find harmony’.Pang's application of scientific metaphors starts off poorly by relying on outdated theories or unquestioned folk psychology. It's more that she uses it to make arbitrary connections to human behaviours that she's observed and make it into some kind of metaphor. Throughout, there is no critical discussion of science concepts, just quick adoption and overapplication to unrelated social domains. momentami pojawiała się terminologia taka nieużywana na codzień, ale była ona natychmiast przekładana za coś z życia wzięte.

I think I wouldn't have minded this book as much if I had known that it was essentially going to be a self-help/memoir.But of course, anyone that has looked into machine learning and AI concepts she uses for these claims would see that computer are absolute failures when it comes to domain-general thinking: They can't think outside of the domain “box” that they have been designed to address (think self-driving cars which have excellent visual perspicacity but no way of adapting to new ways of driving like drifting or stunt car driving, let alone how to play chess or create an artwork). While I’m not on the spectrum and am not as neurodivergent as Pang, I do have clinical depression, atypical social behaviors, and experience some common emotions differently or not at all compared to the general population. Millie tackles all this with a sense of humour and understanding even for the people that have misunderstood her.

Through a set of scientific principles, this book examines life's everyday interactions including: decisions and the route we take to make them; conflict and how we can avoid it; relationships and how we establish them; etiquette and how we conform to it. Since my parents felt they were superior to our neighbors, such an explanation was in line with my family’s attitude.While the scientific analogies prove personally useful to Pang and could be generative for a group discussion on alternative ways of considering social life, Pang’s overloaded analogies and prescriptions serve poorly as generalized guides to humans—even for other people with neurodivergent profiles. Dr Camilla Pang (Millie) explores the intersection between scientific principles including proteins, machine learning, and molecular chemistry with human behaviour to provide an essential and enlightening guide to understanding the world around us. For more infomation please review our use of cookies in our Cookie Policy and then Accept and Close this bar. From her point of view seems to mean mainly comparing human interactions to phenomena in biochemistry, which may be insightful for people who know more than I do about biochemistry, but since I don't, it was a matter of explaining something I already more or less understand - human behaviour - in terms of something I don't. While it was written by someone who clearly knows their science, the science used was almost entirely by analogy rather than application.

Each of those people has struggled in the workplace because of how their diversity is perceived, just like Millie struggles with people viewing her as rude or emotional. Camilla Pang’s mastery of a broad range of subjects, collectively with her self-effacing, and quirky sense of humor, makes her book stand out in comparison to other self-help popular science titles. I'm also not convinced the author was the best person to narrate it; on the one hand it's her personal experience but on the other a professional narrator can transform the listening experience. Long story short, it’s not perfect, but hear me out, this may prove to be a great read for the right kind of person.Daraus entstand eine gute Mischung aus Autobiographie, wissenschaftlichen Erklärungen und Selbsthilfebuch. I loved how relatable this book was and even though I did not know a lot of the science that she talked about, she wrote it in a way that was compelling and made me self reflect. Deshalb weiss ich nicht, wie viel ich aus der Lektüre mitnehmen werde, aber nichtsdestotrotz war es erneut erhellend, das Leben mal aus einem völlig anderen Blickwinkel zu betrachten. We rush to categorize people into distinct boxes to which we assign particular assumptions and expectations, often negative. I’m not actually finished yet but this book wasn’t what I expected and was a bit of a disappointment.