IMDb RATING
8.2/10
3.7K
YOUR RATING
An examination of the nature of human perception and how it can be fooled.An examination of the nature of human perception and how it can be fooled.An examination of the nature of human perception and how it can be fooled.
- Nominated for 1 Primetime Emmy
- 3 nominations total
Browse episodes
Featured reviews
8ivko
This show is an examination of how our brains work, with special emphasis on the cracks in what is its otherwise deeply impressive capabilities. The show is educational, but mostly it's fun to watch because you get to see how your own brain makes assumptions and mistakes under certain circumstances. These range from the fun, optical illusion types of errors to the downright spooky mistakes of reading errors or overconfidence in how common everyday technology works.
To illustrate with an example from the show, without cheating and going online or looking at a physical example, draw a picture of a bicycle with wheels and a frame, then look at a real picture and compare your picture to reality. Even though the mechanism is simple and easily understood, there is a very decent chance that your drawing contains significant errors. This is because our brains don't like to feel that we don't understand the world we live in, so we "hand wave" away the concept of a bicycle, telling ourselves that we understand the concept even if we really don't. And as the show points out with numerous examples, this isn't some isolated or rare example, but is in fact much closer to the norm than we would be comfortable admitting.
I don't know that I would agree with another reviewer that these types of examples should be used to screen job candidates because I think that the point of these examples is that whether or not you pass one particular test, you are almost certain to fail at least some of the tests. The problem isn't smart vs stupid or focused vs lazy, the problem is that our brains are imperfect computing devices. In fact, one could argue that by deciding that these errors don't apply to you by virtue of your intelligence or diligence you are making exactly the type of critical thinking error you are claiming to have overcome.
Observing these cracks in our understanding argues for an extra layer of caution and occasionally pausing to examine our assumptions when making key decisions. Did I really understand the question a coworker asked me or did I make a quick assumption and leap to an incorrect conclusion? Is it really safe for me to answer this one quick phone call while driving or will the conversation require too much attention to do it safely?
Not all of the topics on the show are equally applicable to our day to day lives, and the the show does occasionally rehash slight variations of themes it has previously covered, but all in all I think it's really fascinating to watch, and an excellent show in general to watch with your kids or significant other because there are plenty of opportunities for interactive group brain teasers or exercises to do with others.
By the way, did you catch the extra word in the previous paragraph? Yes? Good on you! Now catch a few episodes and see how well you do on the other tests...
To illustrate with an example from the show, without cheating and going online or looking at a physical example, draw a picture of a bicycle with wheels and a frame, then look at a real picture and compare your picture to reality. Even though the mechanism is simple and easily understood, there is a very decent chance that your drawing contains significant errors. This is because our brains don't like to feel that we don't understand the world we live in, so we "hand wave" away the concept of a bicycle, telling ourselves that we understand the concept even if we really don't. And as the show points out with numerous examples, this isn't some isolated or rare example, but is in fact much closer to the norm than we would be comfortable admitting.
I don't know that I would agree with another reviewer that these types of examples should be used to screen job candidates because I think that the point of these examples is that whether or not you pass one particular test, you are almost certain to fail at least some of the tests. The problem isn't smart vs stupid or focused vs lazy, the problem is that our brains are imperfect computing devices. In fact, one could argue that by deciding that these errors don't apply to you by virtue of your intelligence or diligence you are making exactly the type of critical thinking error you are claiming to have overcome.
Observing these cracks in our understanding argues for an extra layer of caution and occasionally pausing to examine our assumptions when making key decisions. Did I really understand the question a coworker asked me or did I make a quick assumption and leap to an incorrect conclusion? Is it really safe for me to answer this one quick phone call while driving or will the conversation require too much attention to do it safely?
Not all of the topics on the show are equally applicable to our day to day lives, and the the show does occasionally rehash slight variations of themes it has previously covered, but all in all I think it's really fascinating to watch, and an excellent show in general to watch with your kids or significant other because there are plenty of opportunities for interactive group brain teasers or exercises to do with others.
By the way, did you catch the extra word in the previous paragraph? Yes? Good on you! Now catch a few episodes and see how well you do on the other tests...
This programme clarifies how our brains, as well as other features of our body, work and react in different ways. It also shows it in an interesting and comedic way, so it's fun to learn. The preeminent topics the show tells us about are stress, addiction, competition, food, trust and language. Brain games has good humour and is a comedy-based programme.
The humour in this programme is mainly childish. The host of the show for seasons 2-7 is a man called John Silva. The preceding presenter for season 1 was Neil Patrick Harris. The viewers of the show can learn the advantages of the real world and real experiences. This specifies how to revamp your memory, get a prominent night sleep and make more money.
The programme is an Emmy-nominated series as well, which by watching the programme you can see why. The main genres in this programme are Family and Comedy. On the comedy sides of things they had done it perfectly as it was hilarious for the whole 30 minutes. There were only some elements of the show which were not funny, but they were the more enlightening parts. The debut of this show was in 2011 on the National Geographic channel.
The programme is available on Netflix, Youtube and from the Google Play store. To view this on Youtube it would cost £1.99 which also applies to buying and then watching it from the Google Play store. This show met my expectations as I had found programmes like these interesting and putting it into a series really made me watch it. I would immensely recommend watching this programme to other people as it's comedic and you can learn a lot from watching it.
The humour in this programme is mainly childish. The host of the show for seasons 2-7 is a man called John Silva. The preceding presenter for season 1 was Neil Patrick Harris. The viewers of the show can learn the advantages of the real world and real experiences. This specifies how to revamp your memory, get a prominent night sleep and make more money.
The programme is an Emmy-nominated series as well, which by watching the programme you can see why. The main genres in this programme are Family and Comedy. On the comedy sides of things they had done it perfectly as it was hilarious for the whole 30 minutes. There were only some elements of the show which were not funny, but they were the more enlightening parts. The debut of this show was in 2011 on the National Geographic channel.
The programme is available on Netflix, Youtube and from the Google Play store. To view this on Youtube it would cost £1.99 which also applies to buying and then watching it from the Google Play store. This show met my expectations as I had found programmes like these interesting and putting it into a series really made me watch it. I would immensely recommend watching this programme to other people as it's comedic and you can learn a lot from watching it.
The show is pretty good and educational for most of its run. Sometimes the games were dumb but most of them were good. The show did get a little repititive but I enjoyed the first seven seasons. The show changes alot from seasons 1-7 but I still like all of those seasons. The show can teach you a lot of cool things In season eight they made it more of a game show with celebrities every episode and a magician whose tricks were obviously fake like guessing which random person in the crowd had a hat, which is statistically impossible but he guessed it because they faked it. Would recommended just skip season eight.
If seen free of skepticism and with an open eye; the possibilities from what you could learn... are endless.
Did you know
- ConnectionsReferenced in Pastor Mike Online: Mind Control and the New World Order (2013)
- How many seasons does Brain Games have?Powered by Alexa
Details
- Runtime1 hour
- Color
- Aspect ratio
- 16:9 HD
Contribute to this page
Suggest an edit or add missing content
