Brimming with Pinker's customary insight and humor, Rationality will enlighten, inspire, and empower. In this timely book he shows that smart people, and everyone else, are victims of a powerful bias to show that our own tribe is virtuous and wise and knowledgeable and the other tribe is evil and stupid and ignorant. It leads to better choices in our lives and in the public sphere, and is the ultimate driver of social justice and moral progress. Stanovich is a cognitive psychologist who showed that rationality is related, but not identical, to intelligence. Collective rationality depends on norms that are explicitly designed to promote objectivity and truth. Rationality also explores its opposite: how the rational pursuit of self-interest, sectarian solidarity, and uplifting mythology can add up to crippling irrationality in a society. These tools are not a standard part of our education, and have never been presented clearly and entertainingly in a single book-until now. We actually think in ways that are sensible in the low-tech contexts in which we spend most of our lives, but fail to take advantage of the powerful tools of reasoning we've discovered over the millennia: logic, critical thinking, probability, correlation and causation, and optimal ways to update beliefs and commit to choices individually and with others. After all, we discovered the laws of nature, lengthened and enriched our lives, and set out the benchmarks for rationality itself. Pinker rejects the cynical cliché that humans are simply irrational-cavemen out of time saddled with biases, fallacies, and illusions. How can a species that developed vaccines for Covid-19 in less than a year produce so much fake news, medical quackery, and conspiracy theorizing? Today humanity is reaching new heights of scientific understanding-and also appears to be losing its mind. 'In our uncertain age, which can so often feel so dark and disturbing, Steven Pinker has distinguished himself as a voice of positivity.' - New York TimesĬan reading a book make you more rational? Can it help us understand why there is so much irrationality in the world? Steven Pinker, author of Enlightenment Now (Bill Gates's 'new favorite book of all time') answers all the questions here

Rationality by pinker