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Rationality
- What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 11 hrs and 19 mins
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Rationality
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Publisher's Summary
Brought to you by Penguin.
Can reading a book make you more rational? Can it help you understand why there is so much irrationality in the world? These are the goals of Rationality, Steven Pinker's follow-up to Enlightenment Now.
In the 21st century, humanity is reaching new heights of scientific understanding - and, at the same time, 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, quack cures and conspiracy theorising?
Pinker rejects the cynical cliché that humans are an irrational species - 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 the benchmarks for rationality itself. Instead, he explains that we 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 have built up over the millennia: logic, critical thinking, probability, correlation and causation and decision-making. These tools are not a standard part of our educational curricula 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 by individuals 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 insight and humour, Rationality will enlighten, inspire and empower.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
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What listeners say about Rationality
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Joe Cincotta
- 16-04-22
An excellent book at a time it is needed
This book should be required reading in every first year undergrad course. For every degree. Actually, it should be bedtime reading for your primary school children if they can penetrate the language. They may even acquire a fondness for Yiddish humour.
This book penetrates some of the most challenging and seemingly unrelated subjects of our time and provides a kind of 'cognitive glue' to make sense of them as symptoms of something much more profound. Spoiler alert: it's rationality and our cognitive pitfalls - individually and at scale.
The book itself is a joy to listen to, the narrator channels Pinker's brilliant way of taking a complex subject and delivering it in a totally accessible way. I think you really need to get the PDF illustrations to make the most of the book, especially in probability discussions, however even without this - challenging concepts are broken up with analogies and humorous yet poignant asides.
overall, a highly recommended read.
1 person found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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- Tiaan
- 04-12-22
A must reread.
A great body of knowledge to progress humanity. Pinker explicitly puts succinctly that which eludes many of us.
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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- Amazon Customer
- 20-08-22
I recommend it
This is a crash course on statistics. I didn't realise this when I started reading this book and as a statistician, I did not learn much, but I think the general audience would benefit greatly from this book. My only criticism is that it might not be particularly easy to follow this audiobook because it comes with supplementary visual explanations.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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- Beelzebub
- 17-10-21
Splendid!
Everyone should listen to this book. Sadly, the people who need it the most, won't.
7 people found this helpful
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Overall1 out of 5 stars
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Performance1 out of 5 stars
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Story1 out of 5 stars
- Zak
- 11-01-22
Woke irrationality
For a book on rationality it had far too much left ideology. The examples given were to try and make you sound irrational for disliking hilary Clinton or the biden asministration among other things which is mental because America is undergoing their most irrational time due to Biden. As soon as I heard the phrase "mansplaining" the third time I had to stop. If you're looking for a book on rationality with no bias try 'the irrational ape'.
4 people found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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- Lara Reusch
- 11-10-21
Rationality
Classic Pinker. Illuminating, insightful, refreshing, fun. Brought to life with another brilliant performance by Arthur Morey.
4 people found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
- Mr Jeremy J Osborn
- 02-02-23
Required Reading...
...for all skeptics, conspiracy theorists and anyone who doubts science. Positive progress takes time. If we had to debate why we should not torturing people abominable or why women should be educated at all then we have some hope that positive progress can still be made.
1 person found this helpful
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- Nandu Pillai
- 23-04-22
Difficult audio book
An interesting topic approached from angles I hadn't considered before but you might be better off reading this one due to the use of multiple graphs, diagrams and statistics to get points across.
1 person found this helpful
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- DJ Ricks
- 14-12-21
Good book
A good book in general but don't listen to half awake! This book needs some serious concentration and for some of it a PDF to go though a long with the book. Not really one for the car but maybe some quite time and deep thinking. Great book just maybe not quite one 100% for me and my circumstances! Just maybe the voice acting could have been a little more upbeat to help with keeping me engaged but the overall concept, content and layout of the book was extremely good.
1 person found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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- Paul La Femina
- 07-12-21
rational!
An excellent book well read that should be understood as best as possible by everyone.
1 person found this helpful
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- Mr. H
- 14-11-21
Reasonably good but disappointing
Pinker gives an excellent presentation of basic logic thinking and common fallacies and how to guard against them.
Where he fails a bit is in assessing the different values of Conservatism and Liberalism. He is clearly familiar with the latter, both in its classical version and the more left-wing version, and he gives a fair presentation of them in light of rational thinking.
But Conservatism appears to be written out of Dr. Pinker's script, or caricatured as Trumpist populism (which is a million miles away from traditional Conservatism).
I suspect Pinker doesn't know much about Burkean Conservatism, and as such it would perhaps have been better to have stayed or of politics altogether.
Great narrator, and all in all an enjoyable audio book.
1 person found this helpful
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- somsween
- 22-12-22
disappointing.
in short - this could be titled: an abridged version of the better angels of our nature. so much of its content except for a few mentions of covid is practically the same, I expected something different, sorry
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Frank
- 27-08-22
Good but maybe better read than heard.
Not Pinker's most engaging work but valuable stuff. Too complex I think for audio book.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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- Anonymous User
- 04-10-21
essential
Just like any other work from Pinker, a very good book, essential for critical thinking skills. Highly recommend it
3 people found this helpful
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance2 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- AHP
- 11-10-22
Good to Read. Not Good to Listen
It's a very 'technical' read. The author goes into the scientific and mathematical proofs of rationality really early on in the book.
Although fascinating, it was hard to follow along by just listening. I couldn't finish it.
If this type of material is your bag, I'd suggest the print version may be better suited.
1 person found this helpful
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- mokagio
- 31-12-22
Too much math and politics
I had high expectations coming in, but I felt like half of the book explained mathematical tools that only partially apply to every day decision making. All the examples from politics didn’t help, because they gave the book a tone that I’m sure some folks will use to discredit it, despite the whole point of the book being to teach us how to look past opinions and into facts.
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Kevin Joseph Neill
- 30-10-22
Pinker does it again
Just when you thought that Pinker was finished with bringing new ideas to the table, he does it again. A truly great read.
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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- Stefan Mackay
- 10-09-22
this book is probably better read
Reading would give you more time to absorb the concepts.
listening to it, the pace is too fast for your mind to absorb one concept before the next is upon you.
I'm going to get the paper version.
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- Louis Cohalan
- 09-06-22
Good but not his best
Good defense of our rational faculties from the assault from pop psychology but it quotes so much from Kahneman, you may as well read Thinking Fast and Slow before this. For a dose of Pinker’s brilliance I recommend Better Angels… and The Blank Slate before this one.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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- norah
- 21-05-22
Amazing
One of the best book I’ve ever read. Cannot recommend enough, if one wants to grow, learn more and excel in whatever field one is an expert of. This book is applicable to any intellectual part of your life.
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Overall1 out of 5 stars
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Performance1 out of 5 stars
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- Anon7747998
- 19-04-22
So repetitive and annoying...
I like Steven Pinker's ideas and I understand he wanted to give examples, but he completely lost track here. I've tried very hard, tried to skip some of the repetitive sessions, just to end up in another repetitive session, and another... Then I gave up. Literally, numerically, statistically a waste of time.
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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- Anonymous User
- 25-02-22
Not as good as some of SPs other work
Too basic (though I do have an advanced Sci background) and not enough new/interesting content.
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- W. Lang
- 19-02-22
Better read than listened to given the underlying
complexity and wide ranging terminology, would benefit from a laymans version for helping the reader make the case to their friends