3 out of 4 stars
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The Roving Mind A Modern Approach to Cognitive Enhancement by Anthony Simola is a self-help book, which is targeted to the audience that is on the pursuit to improve their intellectual performance. For the students who are building up their academic career or the employees who are into the profession that demands a competing cognitive performance, this book has some good takeaways that are beneficial for both of them. This book is divided into three sections namely, the foundations of the intelligence, the plasticity of the human mind, and marching to the singularity.
The first section focuses on the foundations of intelligence and elaborates on the definitions of intelligence and distraction. Moreover, it also gives some basic insights into the different kinds of foods, nootropics, and the tonics for boosting intelligence. The second section is about the plasticity of the human brain and the various methods that can be applied to shape the brain and make it more intelligent. The third section is about marching towards singularity and covers the mapping of the human brain, psychopharmacology, and super intelligence by augmentation or by artificial means.
What I liked the most about this book is the author’s efforts of collecting information from many sources on all the techniques that are available today for boosting human intelligence and serving it in one book. The detail description of the pros and cons of each technology and the potential risks involved in its usage as well as the legal regulation problems in incorporating them is explained clearly, and I found the same very much helpful. The only thing I disliked most in this book is that this book wanted good editing because I observed numerous spelling and grammatical errors in it, which was hindering the fast pace of reading.
I recommend this book to the students who are pursuing higher education as well as to the employees whose job require higher intellectual performance. Moreover, this book is also valuable to the people who wish to retain their intellectual performance in their old age. However, I do not recommend this book to children and teenagers because they may not on their own understand the concepts clearly and the potential risks involved while incorporating some of these procedures described in this book into their daily life.
The contents of this book are very much helpful, but it requires thorough editing as there are plenty of grammatical errors in the form of punctuation marks and few misspelled words and also incorrect words. Moreover, numerous random hyphens were spread in most of the paragraphs in this book, which hindered the flow of reading, and it took a long time for me to finish reading this book. One of notable error was in the sentence “If you have food allergies, you must eliminate foods that can trigger a reaction, as well—dairy, wheat, eggs, or soy.” where “reaction, as well—dairy“ should have been “reaction as well, which could be dairy ” for more clarity. Another notable error was in the sentence “More importantly, this applies to the development of various skills: we are gradually reverse-engineering skill acquisition, itself also a skill and this book is part of that process.” Where "acquisition, itself also’‘ should have been "acquisition, which itself is also” for clarity. Had this book been well edited, I would have given all the four stars for the indispensable information given in it. However, I am giving only 3 out of 4 stars because of its editing requirements.
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The Roving Mind: A Modern Approach to Cognitive Enhancement
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Thanks for a great review!
I definitely want to read this book. Thanks for your insightful review!
