|
Poker is often described as the game of life. And life the ultimate poker game. Little did folks know just how true that is! Poker is exactly what we played throughout evolutionary history, and our emotions evolved for playing it. Emotional expressions just are bets. ...of reputation, or cool. In poker, two players discuss whose cards are stronger, and they discuss via bets. In life, our ancestors discussed who's right about some disagreement, and they discussed via emotions. ...which are bets. Not of money, but of cool. No longer just a throwaway metaphor, evolutionary neurobiologist Dr. Mark Changizi and mathematician Dr. Tim Barber take us on a journey from poker to our suite of emotional expressions, what they mean, how they relate to cool, and the betting of cool. ...so as to become even cooler. ~ ~ ~ ~ |
Happy to announce that the next book is on its way, this one a collaboration with my brilliant 2ai colleague Tim Barber: UNMASKED: Why We Express Emotions.
As usual for my books, it's a grand unifying theory, easy reading for anyone, and hopefully funny! This is quite the change-up from my previous books. Not theoretical biology. Not visual perception. Not language. Not harnessing-related. Now it's emotion and cool, all the way down.
Tim and I had an intuition that we could explain why we have the emotion engine we have, and explain it from first principles. ...and that somehow poker was crucial. But it took us around eight years to pull all the strings together, push the pieces into place, flatten out the shag carpet, etc.
As usual for my books, it's a grand unifying theory, easy reading for anyone, and hopefully funny! This is quite the change-up from my previous books. Not theoretical biology. Not visual perception. Not language. Not harnessing-related. Now it's emotion and cool, all the way down.
Tim and I had an intuition that we could explain why we have the emotion engine we have, and explain it from first principles. ...and that somehow poker was crucial. But it took us around eight years to pull all the strings together, push the pieces into place, flatten out the shag carpet, etc.