Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters, What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters by Steven Pinker -- Read -- Imperial Library of Trantor

Index

Cover Also by Steven Pinker Title Page Copyright Dedication Epigraph Contents Preface 1. How Rational an Animal?

Three Simple Math Problems A Simple Logic Problem A Simple Probability Problem A Simple Forecasting Problem The Moral from Cognitive Illusions

2. Rationality and Irrationality

Reasons for Reason Stop Making Sense? Conflicts among Goals Conflicts among Time Frames Rational Ignorance Rational Incapacity and Rational Irrationality Taboo Morality Rationality about Rationality

3. Logic and Critical Thinking

Formal Logic and Formal Fallacies Formal Reconstruction Critical Thinking and Informal Fallacies Logical versus Empirical Truths Formal versus Ecological Rationality Classical versus Family Resemblance Categories Logical Computation versus Pattern Association

4. Probability and Randomness

What Is Randomness? Where Does It Come From? What Does “Probability” Mean? Probability versus Availability Conjunctive, Disjunctive, and Conditional Probabilities Prior and Post Hoc Probabilities

5. Beliefs and Evidence (Bayesian Reasoning)

Base-Rate Neglect and the Representativeness Heuristic Priors in Science and the Revenge of the Textbooks Forbidden Base Rates and Bayesian Taboo Bayesian after All

6. Risk and Reward (Rational Choice and Expected Utility)

A Theory of Rational Choice How Useful Is Utility? Violating the Axioms: How Irrational? Rational Choices after All?

7. Hits and False Alarms (Signal Detection and Statistical Decision Theory)

Signals and Noise, Yeses and Nos Costs and Benefits, and Setting a Cutoff Sensitivity versus Response Bias Signal Detection in the Courtroom Signal Detection and Statistical Significance

8. Self and Others (Game Theory)

A Zero-Sum Game: Scissors-Paper-Rock A Non-Zero-Sum Game: The Volunteer’s Dilemma Rendezvous and Other Coordination Games Chicken and Escalation Games The Prisoner’s Dilemma and the Tragedy of the Commons

9. Correlation and Causation

What Is Correlation? Regression to the Mean What Is Causation? From Correlation to Causation: Real and Natural Experiments From Correlation to Causation without Experimentation Multiple Causes, Adding and Interacting Causal Networks and Human Beings

10. What’s Wrong with People?

Motivated Reasoning The Myside Bias Two Kinds of Belief: Reality and Mythology The Psychology of Apocrypha Reaffirming Rationality

11. Why Rationality Matters

Rationality in Our Lives Rationality and Material Progress Rationality and Moral Progress

Notes References Index of Biases and Fallacies Index About the Author