A review by drwhere
Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters by Steven Pinker

2.0

Book is fine. But for those interested in the topic who likely have some education in probability and statistics, this is prett pedantic. Having had many years of courses as a scientist and engineer, this book was kinda like a best-of highlight real of the interesting examples where probability theory does or doesn’t break our intuition. There were some useful ideas about how many cognitive biases are exacerbated by the context and might not be so biased when we consider their potential utility in their original context or how they may not even be present in original context and are only measurable when humans are asked to do reasoning in contrived manner of a psych study or taken advantage of by manipulative advertising/technology/etc. If you haven’t had stats/bayesian reasoning/probability/game-theory ever, this would be a decent read. But if you have go check out The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver, that’s a way more interesting read on this same topic.