{"id":16414,"date":"2022-09-21T17:36:03","date_gmt":"2022-09-22T00:36:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/?p=16414"},"modified":"2022-09-21T17:37:45","modified_gmt":"2022-09-22T00:37:45","slug":"justin-gregg-if-nietzsche-were-a-narwhal-2022","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/2022\/09\/21\/justin-gregg-if-nietzsche-were-a-narwhal-2022\/","title":{"rendered":"Justin Gregg: IF NIETZSCHE WERE A NARWHAL (2022)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Here\u2019s a recent nonfiction book with a provocative thesis and some interesting points which nevertheless I give a mixed review of.<\/p>\n

Perhaps helpful to consider scoring the book along several independent parameters, like on some of those cooking shows, e.g. Iron Chef.<\/p>\n

The author is an adjunct professor at a university in Nova Scotia. This seems to be his first book.<\/p>\n

For book design and presentation, it scores, say, a 2 on a scale of 1 to 5, 5 being best. Because it has inordinately large type. It\u2019s 300 pages, and so looks like a substantial book, but with a more typical font size, it would be 250 pages or fewer, I suspect. It gives the impression that it\u2019s written for teenagers, or that the publishers thinks it\u2019s an insubstantial book that needs a bit of puffing up to look like a real, adult book.<\/p>\n

For thesis, it gets a 4. Let\u2019s stipulate where we are (in this blog\u2019s ongoing discussion) in fitting this book into some kind of context. The subtitle is \u201cWhat Animal Intelligence Reveals About Human Stupidity,\u201d and reviewers (the book was summarized in an issue of The Week<\/em> a while back \u2013 book of the week, in effect, rather an honor) crowed over the idea that humans are really stupid (compared to the intuitive animals, perhaps), or that our intelligence is in some way counterproductive.<\/p>\n

Before reading the book I wrote, Going in: we\u2019ve established that most people don\u2019t know anything about the universe outside their immediate community; further, that they don\u2019t need to; even further, it\u2019s probably just as well. (See Provisional Conclusions<\/a> numbers 12 and 13.) So is this book an expansion of that third idea? That possessing knowledge, perhaps, derails our instinctive\/gut sensibilities for how to live, and thus such \u201cintelligence\u201d amounts to a certain sort of stupidity? We\u2019ll see.<\/p>\n

Conclusion after reading: The subtitle oversells the book, to the point of hyperbole. It\u2019s not about how humans are \u201cstupid.\u201d It\u2019s about humans are, at times, too smart for their own good; our intelligence gets us into trouble at times, perhaps even threatening our survival as a species. Other animals don\u2019t do this. (For animal \u201cintelligence\u201d and \u201cperception,\u201d I suspect Ed Yong\u2019s recent AN IMMENSE WORLD is far superior to this book.)<\/p>\n

Narrative: score of 3 out of 5. A lot of this information is familiar, but Gregg writes as if you\u2019ve never heard of it before, belaboring even simple principles. Entire chapters go by without establishing much of anything.<\/p>\n

Bits here and there: 4 out of 5. Despite which, here and there are some good insights, a new term or two.<\/p>\n

Now I\u2019ll step through the book and capture key issues, along the above lines.<\/p>\n