“Rationality should be the pole star of everything we think and do (if you don’t agree with this statement, are your objections rational?). Yet in an age rich in unprecedented reasoning resources, the public sphere is infested with fake news, quack cures, conspiracy theories and “post-truth” rhetoric. How can we come to discern meaning from nonsense? The question is urgent ”.
So, direct is Canadian psychologist and cognitive scientist Steven Pinker to start his book Rationality, who has just arrived in Chile via Paidós.
In the 21st century, humanity is reaching new heights in scientific understanding and at the same time it seems to be going mad. In fact, he wonders, how can a species that has developed COVID-19 vaccines in less than a year produce so much fake news, healer cures, and conspiracy theories?
At Rationality, Pinker dismisses the cynical cliché that we are an irrational species, explaining instead that we think reasonably 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 have built on. millennia: logic, critical thinking, probability, correlation and causation, and decision making.
In these 540 pages, the author provides the tools to fight against pseudosciences, fake news and put an end to the deceptions of landlords and deniers. Rationality is important, Pinker suggests, because it enables us to make better decisions in our lives and in the public sphere, and it is the main engine of social justice and moral progress.
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