Rationality

What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters

By: Steven Pinker

Narrated by: Arthur Morey

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 Audio

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)

clear, useful, and important

The contents of this book would be most useful to those who will never read it, unfortunately. But we all evolved irrational heuristics and need to consciously assist our thought patterns to get things right. Pinker lays out a guidebook of sorts to assist in thinking more clearly. Good reminders and a good read.

Last few chapters best

The book is extremely useful, but also challenging. It humbled me in facing the intricacies of logic and probability and how counterintuitive they can be. The book also encourages me in clarifying that I do think rationally often and that I’m open and reflective in my thinking process. It’s an excellent book to fight complacency, which can undo even conscientious people into forgetting their way.

Good plead to Rationality and human race

An interesting approach to Rationality and how it is still missing in the majority of humanity. Although some parts can be argued to be controversial, it is the interpretation that makes it so. A valuable read

Great content but some sections require pdf

loved the explanation of rationality. If you're not somewhat familiar with logic diagrams and tables, be sure to have the pdf available while listening.

It is difficult to be completely rational

The core material was excellent. The examples illustrating the concepts were pretty good except when they were political. Then his examples themselves might have been used to illustrate "My-sidedness" and the failure to listen to what people the author disagrees with and belittles have to say. Still it is a valuable book about rationality.

Get the book, skip the middle.

This is a wonderful short book with a long, boring undergraduate textbook stuffed in the middle.

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.

Pinker’s best book yet.

Disregard the reviews that say this book is half finished or filled with his notes. Chapters 2-9 are undoubtedly dense, but that doesn’t mean they’re not excellent.

If you want to have a better understanding of how to think through problems more rationally, and if you want to understand how humans can be so smart and also so dumb, this book should go a long way in helping you.

Excellent summary book on Rationality!

I’m not usually a big fan of Pinkers writing but this book is an excellent summary of the topic!

Required Reading

If we are not going to instill civic lessons and new media literacy in our schools, the least we can do is make sure everyone in the United States reads this essential book.

I need to read this . . .

A tough book for Audible. Morey is an excellent reader/narrator. I need to revisit w pen in hand.