I do not regret reading this book, but I did not like it. It did not meet my expectations. I expected a discussion of, well, how our economic lives are shaped by biology and psychology. What I found was a standard (and compared to other books, less engaging) presentation of many common ideas from experimental psychology. Rather than a general discussion of economics and psychology, Shermer focused on a narrow point: human beings are not the rational creatures that economists assume we are. This is an excellent point, but others have made it better (such as Sunstein and Thaler in Nudge).

The book has a couple other limitations. The author mixes experimental psychology and evolutionary psychology. Evolutionary psychology has its place; it is certainly interesting to think about why different psychological states evolved. However, it tends to be highly speculative, at least in popular presentations, and I tend to be wary of arguments which depend on it.

The other limitation is that Shermer is a bit too eager to support his libertarian ideology. He makes statements which imply that the psychological tendencies he discusses support this economic ideology. However, the points he makes are so general that to claim them in favor of a particular ideology weakens the whole book.

For example, Shermer shows that trade has a psychological purpose (establishing trust and bonding) as well as an economic one (providing goods not otherwise available). This is a fascinating point, and I would have liked to see the consequences explored at length. Instead, Shermer jumps straight from there to the conclusion that the best economy is one based on completely unregulated free trade. Such an over generalization undermines Shermer's original insight.

All in all, this book stimulated some thinking, but I would not read it again. ( )

Why do we make the choices we make? How much are we a product of culture / marketing? Why do we do the things we do? How much of our lives.. our circumstances ... did we create ourselves? A lot of the books I read approach these subjects. Perhaps, because I read so many of them, a lot of the stories and ideas are becoming redundant.

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There is more information in the 261 pages of The Mind of the Market than there is in most books more than twice its size. That is both an advantage and a disadvantage in the sense that the book held the reader's attention even though the fecundity of ideas sometimes bordered on the overwhelming. Michael Shermer, the author of The Mind of the Market, is the publisher of Skeptic Magazine and the author of nine previous books. In this book he attempts to capture the "Mind" of the Market while arguing against previous visions of how the market works while surveying scientific theories that he believes may be used to replace these earlier visions. I came to the book receptive to his support of free market economics, his penultimate chapter is entitled "Free to Choose" - a direct reference to Milton Friedman's classic text of the same name; however I was not convinced that, with all the scientific theories and studies used as examples of "evolutionary" economics and the neuroscience of the market, he made a convincing case. Many of the pieces of the book seemed to just hang there, fascinating little essays on some aspect of science or how "Homo Economicus" no longer exists (or perhaps never did!).

He summarizes his goals as describing 1) How the market has a mind of its own; 2) How minds operate in markets: and,
3) How minds and markets are moral. Each of these goals can be included under the rubric of "Evolutionary Economics" in Shermer's estimation. For my "money" and "mind" I found his attempt to be informative and entertaining if not, in the end, convincing. ( )

I like Mind of the Market more than most because it ties in so well with my emergence marketing ideas. The nascent science of Neuroeconomics is still trying its hat on. Shermer is able to breathe life into data and his NonZero altruistic findings is another favorite idea. Reading Mind soon after NonZero by Wright was informative and suggestive. ( )

Michael Shermer's life is as interesting as this explanation about how our minds haven't yet caught up to our modern economic world. We're hard-wired to make purchases quickly, share our big kills, trade with trusted systems, feel a rush at cooperating, avoid losses, and respond tit for tat. One interesting fact - quoting a Rudolf Rummel analysis - of 371 international wars from 1816 to 2005 where at least 1000 people were killed, 205 were between nondemocratic nations, 166 between a nondemocratic and a democratic, and none were between democratic nations. ( )