Sorry to mislead you, the book does not refute thousands of years of human experience. What it does do is focus on the break through that scientists made due to the unusual condition of one man who lost the ability to transfer short term memory to long term memory due to an illness.
What came out of that was new insight into habits and how they are not governed by the part of the brain we attribute with thinking. Instead habits are lodged in the primitive brain.
And that’s the point, habits are not subject to as much self control as most believe. Folks with bad habits are considered to have poor self control which is now known not to be the case.
You can never get rid of a habit. You can develop a new habit instead. But the old habit remains and can resurface in times of stress. The book was a constant stream of Eureka moments for me. It provided the answer to issues with human nature that I’ve been wondering about for most of my life.
For some situations it explains why smart people do stupid things.
The book comforted you; okay. However, I believe that the theory is an excuse that I doubt would carry much weight in front of a judge, since this ex-cop’s lethal behavior is the issue. If it did, it would work against him, since he might “snap” again at any time.