Most of this was great - I either learned some things, or it confirmed things I already knew, and we all know that rationality is about confirming what we already know....!

I liked how deep into Bayes Theorem he went, and statistics. I don't know if he was trying to flex for Taleb, but Pinker knows his stuff.

Now for the negative, since, as the aforementioned Taleb likes to say, we learn more by via negativa.

Pinker tended to straw man people, especially Trump. And I bet that Pinker would deny it. But he's triggered by Trump, and he either mocks or dismisses Trump's ideas and statements. A Trump supporter would easily brush aside Pinker's comments not because the Trump supporter is suffering cognitive dissonance, but because Pinker's representation of Trumpism was so bad. He does this with religion too, and while religions deserve their share of criticism, if Pinker can't use strong rational arguments to dissect them, then his case for rationality loses credibility.

This seemed linked to his epistemological reference point bias - he struggled to empathise with other people's assumptions. But other people's ideas may appear to us absurd if we don't know the assumptions from which they're operating. It might not be that they're being illogical or irrational, but that their assumptions, when logically and rationally followed, lead to conclusions that are absurd or abhorent to us.

Pinker also didn't really define rationality very clearly. Or maybe he did, but it didn't stick with me. I like rationality, it's better than the alternatives. But it's ultimately circular, and Pinker doesn't really recognise that. Or at least, where he does recognise it, he brushes it away. Not very rational.

Another flaw is that Pinker clearly despises Cancel Culture, yet doesn't realise that he endorses a type of cancel culture when supporting the cancelling of Trump from Twitter, or Trump's staff from new jobs. There were other examples too that I've forgotten now, but we tend to see cancelling others as necessary when it's to protect our own interests, and anti-enlightenment when it's to protect the interests of minorities with whom we hold no common investments. For example, Trans people aren't just flexing and having a tantrum when they want to cancel JKR; they believe that JKR's speech is causing them real harm. Similarly, Twitter cancelled Trump because Trump's speech was causing harm. But this is a larger topic, maybe for another time...

So yeah, good overview of all the popular psych studies on cognitive biases; good overview of Bayes Theorem; good overview of logic and statistics. A little bit self-unaware.

While Pinker’s excellent The Blank Slate is also quite debatable, “Rationality” feels like #nothingbutthetruth - but of course also not #thewholetruth - a microscopic but worthwhile contribution towards progress, and imho good enough to constitue mandatory reading in any high school.

Readers well familar with (ir)rationality and beyesian reasoning may profitably skip ahead to the juicy tenth chapter, which Pinker himself introduces with the words “This is the chapter most of you have been waiting for.” It didn’t dissapoint.

For further reading on why everyone (else) is crazy - which Pinker rationalises about in an suitably humble manner - I highly recommend “The Righteous Mind” by Jonathan Haidt.

Brilliant! Very well structured, which is not easy for a book on rationality. Very well researched, great resources cited. Very highly recommended!

The first several chapters read like a college textbook. Chapter 10 and 11 are must reads. They address what has happened to our rationality and how to reclaim it.