
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
About this listen
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...
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Audiobook review (just a podcast collection)
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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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Can there be freedom and free will in a deterministic world? Renowned philosopher Daniel Dennett emphatically answers "yes!" Using an array of provocative formulations, Dennett sets out to show how we alone among the animals have evolved minds that give us free will and morality. Weaving a richly detailed narrative, Dennett explains in a series of strikingly original arguments - drawing upon evolutionary biology, cognitive neuroscience, economics, and philosophy - that far from being an enemy of traditional explorations of freedom, morality, and meaning, the evolutionary perspective can be an indispensable ally.
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I knew I was going to like this book
- By Gary on 05-30-14
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Giving the Devil His Due
- Reflections of a Scientific Humanist
- By: Michael Shermer
- Narrated by: Michael Shermer
- Length: 13 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Who is the "Devil"? And what is he due? The devil is anyone who disagrees with you. And what he is due is the right to speak his mind. He must have this for your own safety's sake, because his freedom is inextricably tied to your own. If he can be censored, why shouldn't you be censored? If we put barriers up to silence "unpleasant" ideas, what's to stop the silencing of any discussion? This book is a full-throated defense of free speech and open inquiry in politics, science, and culture by the New York Times best-selling author and skeptic Michael Shermer.
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Flawed Audio
- By Private on 04-10-20
By: Michael Shermer
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Bozo Sapiens
- Why to Err Is Human
- By: Michael Kaplan, Ellen Kaplan
- Narrated by: Victor Bevine
- Length: 9 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Our species, it appears, is hardwired to get things wrong in myriad different ways. Why did recipients of a loan offer accept a higher rate of interest when a pretty woman's face was printed on the flyer? Why did one poll on immigration find the most despised aliens were ones from a group that did not exist? What made four of the Air Force's best pilots fly their planes, in formation, straight into the ground?
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A tour de force
- By Ivan on 07-05-11
By: Michael Kaplan, and others
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Breaking the Spell
- Religion as a Natural Phenomenon
- By: Daniel C. Dennett
- Narrated by: Dennis Holland
- Length: 12 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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For all the thousands of books that have been written about religion, few until this one have attempted to examine it scientifically: to ask why - and how - it has shaped so many lives so strongly. Is religion a product of blind evolutionary instinct or rational choice? Is it truly the best way to live a moral life? Ranging through biology, history, and psychology, Daniel C. Dennett charts religion’s evolution from “wild” folk belief to “domesticated” dogma.
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Great Reader Actually Enhances A Great Book!
- By Don Caliente on 07-14-14
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The Great Mental Models
- General Thinking Concepts
- By: Shane Parrish
- Narrated by: Shane Parrish
- Length: 3 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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The Great Mental Models: General Thinking Concepts is the first book in The Great Mental Models series designed to upgrade your thinking with the best, most useful and powerful tools so you always have the right one on hand. This volume details nine of the most versatile all-purpose mental models you can use right away to improve your decision making, your productivity, and how clearly you see the world.
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A dissapointing debut
- By Peter on 04-14-19
By: Shane Parrish
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Virus of the Mind
- The New Science of the Meme
- By: Richard Brodie
- Narrated by: Richard Brodie
- Length: 4 hrs and 36 mins
- Abridged
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Virus of the Mind is the first popular work devoted to the science of memetics, a controversial new field that transcends psychology, biology, anthropology, and cognitive science. Memetics is the science of memes, the invisible but very real DNA of human society. Here, the author carefully builds on the work of scientists Richard Dawkins, Douglas Hofstadter, Daniel Dennett, and others who have become fascinated with memes and their potential impact on our lives.
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The "Memes Explain Everything" Meme.
- By Nelson Alexander on 02-20-10
By: Richard Brodie
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The Myth of the Rational Voter
- Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies
- By: Bryan Caplan
- Narrated by: David Drummond
- Length: 8 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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The greatest obstacle to sound economic policy is not entrenched special interests or rampant lobbying, but the popular misconceptions, irrational beliefs, and personal biases held by ordinary voters. This is economist Bryan Caplan's sobering assessment in this provocative and eye-opening book.
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Refreshing
- By Lyle Wincentsen on 05-12-11
By: Bryan Caplan
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The Better Angels of Our Nature
- Why Violence Has Declined
- By: Steven Pinker
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 36 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Faced with the ceaseless stream of news about war, crime, and terrorism, one could easily think we live in the most violent age ever seen. Yet as New York Times bestselling author Steven Pinker shows in this startling and engaging new work, just the opposite is true: violence has been diminishing for millennia and we may be living in the most peaceful time in our species's existence.
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I'd kill for another book this good
- By Eric on 11-11-11
By: Steven Pinker
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You Are Now Less Dumb
- How to Conquer Mob Mentality, How to Buy Happiness, and All the Other Ways to Outsmart Yourself
- By: David McRaney
- Narrated by: Don Hagen
- Length: 8 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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You Are Now Less Dumb is grounded in the idea that we all believe ourselves to be objective observers of reality - except we’re not. But that's okay, because our delusions keep us sane. Expanding on this premise, McRaney provides eye-opening analyses of 15 more ways we fool ourselves every day. This smart and highly entertaining audiobook will be wowing listeners for years to come.
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Not a lot of guidance
- By A. Yoshida on 02-08-14
By: David McRaney
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Future Babble
- Why Expert Predictions Fail - and Why We Believe Them Anyway
- By: Dan Gardner
- Narrated by: Walter Dixon
- Length: 11 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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In Future Babble, award-winning journalist Dan Gardner presents landmark research debunking the whole expert prediction industry and explores our obsession with the future. The truth is that experts are about as accurate as dart-throwing monkeys.
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Future Babble Babble
- By Karen on 05-04-11
By: Dan Gardner
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Mindwise
- Why We Misunderstand What Others Think, Believe, Feel, and Want
- By: Nicholas Epley
- Narrated by: Nicholas Epley
- Length: 6 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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You are a mind reader, born with an extraordinary ability to understand what others think, feel, believe, want, and know. It's a sixth sense you use every day, in every personal and professional relationship you have. At its best, this ability allows you to achieve the most important goal in almost any life: connecting, deeply and intimately and honestly, to other human beings. At its worst, it is a source of misunderstanding and unnecessary conflict, leading to damaged relationships and broken dreams. How good are you at knowing the minds of others?
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Finally gave up - no real point
- By Thomas on 05-12-14
By: Nicholas Epley
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Blindspot
- By: Mahzarin R. Banaji, Anthony G. Greenwald
- Narrated by: Eric Jason Martin
- Length: 7 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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I know my own mind. I am able to assess others in a fair and accurate way. These self-perceptions are challenged by leading psychologists Mahzarin R. Banaji and Anthony G. Greenwald as they explore the hidden biases we all carry from a lifetime of exposure to cultural attitudes about age, gender, race, ethnicity, religion, social class, sexuality, disability status, and nationality. Blindspot is the authors’ metaphor for the portion of the mind that houses hidden biases.
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Difficult to interpret.
- By Ryan Arnold on 12-21-15
By: Mahzarin R. Banaji, and others
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