
Rationality
What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters
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Narrated by:
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Arthur Morey
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By:
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Steven Pinker
Can 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’ "new favorite book of all time”) answers all the questions here.
Today humanity is reaching new heights of scientific understanding - and also appears to be losing its mind. 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?
Pinker rejects the cynical cliché that humans are simply irrational - cavemen out of time saddled with biases, fallacies, and illusions. After all, we discovered the laws of nature, lengthened and enriched our lives, and set out the benchmarks for rationality itself. 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. These tools are not a standard part of our education, and have never been presented clearly and entertainingly in a single book - until now.
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. Collective rationality depends on norms that are explicitly designed to promote objectivity and truth.
Rationality matters. It leads to better choices in our lives and in the public sphere and is the ultimate driver of social justice and moral progress. Brimming with Pinker’s customary insight and humor, Rationality will enlighten, inspire, and empower.
This audiobook includes a PDF of charts and graphs.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2021 Steven Pinker (P)2021 Penguin AudioListeners also enjoyed...




















Critic reviews
“An impassioned and zippy introduction to the tools of rational thought… Punchy, funny and invigorating.” (The Times, London)
“An engaging analysis of the highest of our faculties and perhaps (ironically) the least understood.” (The Wall Street Journal)
“If you’ve ever considered taking drugs to make yourself smarter, read Rationality instead.” (Jonathan Haidt, New York Times best-selling co-author of The Coddling of the American Mind)
"Erudite, lucid, funny and dense with fascinating material... A pragmatic dose of measured optimism, presenting rationality as a fragile but achievable ideal in personal and civic life.... It’s no small achievement to make formal logic, game theory, statistics and Bayesian reasoning delightful topics full of charm and relevance." (The Washington Post)
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clear, useful, and important
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Last few chapters best
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Good plead to Rationality and human race
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Deeply Thought Provoking
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overall good and important
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Love reading Steven Pinker!
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Well constructed
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Great content but some sections require pdf
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It is difficult to be completely rational
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It's really odd. Chapters 1, 2, 10, and 11 are a wonderful essay about why rationality is essential, why humans are not hopelessly irrational, and how to push for a more rational world. Chapters 3 through 9, meanwhile, constitute his notes from his undergraduate course on formal systems of logic and similar subjects. Any of this could be interesting if you want to read a textbook, but if you do, audio is not the right format. It's very hard to follow his reasoning without being able to see it spelled out on the page. And I'm not convinced that all of it is relevant to the average person who wants to think rationally.
So for most people, I recommend skipping chapters 3 through 8. (Chapter 9, on correlation and causation, is the most enjoyable of the textbook-style chapters). You can find more accessible treatments of many of these issues elsewhere, such as in Nate Silver's The Signal and The Noise.
It's a shame many won't get to the excellent final two chapters of this book because of all the sludge in the middle. They really are wonderful.
Get the book, skip the middle.
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