The human mind is the product of biological processes.
Although to a person's own experience, their mind feels completely self-explanatory, it is actually the product of evolutionary processes which shape animals into more well-adapted, well-equipped creatures over the course of millions of generations. McRaney spends this book explaining how our perception of the mind differs from the truth of the matter when it comes to what we can observe about the mind's performance through science. He says that although we don't very much feel like animals, he feels even our psyche is the product of our animal nature.
Humans are designed to live in communities.
Not only does McRaney remind his audience that our animal bodies live in herds by natural design, he even adds that if a person thinks online relationships count, they don't. A person can have thousands of internet friends, but if their body remains alone in their home, their body will feel alone. Without living in real community with people we truly care deeply about, we cannot exist happily as animals, says McRaney.
The human brain makes lots of little mistakes.
When the brain makes calculations about a situation, it does so according to limited processes that have limited results in our perception. He spends the book explaining little ways that a person might wrongly believe something about their mind that isn't actually true. As an example, we can look at the issue of confirmation bias. A person who believes that they get stopped by red lights more than normal can begin to have an experience of reality that confirms their wrongful bias.
