Additional Books to Read

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1.  The SCIENCE of Epistemic Rationality ... and How the Error-prone Ways in which the Highly Intelligent, the Highly Educated, and the Rest of Us Form Political Beliefs are Putting Democracy at Risk.  Tim Sawyer, 2023.

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          Yes, I am of course biased, but I believe my own book is the place to start.  In it, I attempt to summarize and synthesize the key books and research of all of the authors below, plus many more, in a highly understandable way.  I also provide a key theory of my own regarding the evolutionary roots of our highly biased thinking, and explain why for most people, true open-minded, epistemically rational thinking is extremely difficult or impossible.

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2.  Thinking, Fast and Slow.  Daniel Kahneman, 2011.   

 

          This is the book for understanding the basics of heuristics, cognitive biases, and System 1 (fast, easy, intuitive) versus System 2 (slow, effortful, reflective) thinking.  Former Princeton psychologist Kahneman won the Nobel Prize in economics; his work (and that of his late research partner, Amos Tversky) also formed the basis for the field of behavioral economics.  The book is thick, but it’s a relatively easy read.  It's written for a general audience, but if you want to really understand the concepts, you’ll need to take notes and put some time and effort into it.

 

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3.  The Rationality Quotient:  Toward a Test of Rational Thinking.  Keith Stanovich, Richard West, and Maggie Toplak, 2016.   

 

          This book provides tremendous insight into the profound differences between intelligence (as measured by IQ testing, for example), versus epistemic rationality (basically, the ability to arrive at objective truth).  The authors make a compelling argument that intelligence and epistemic rationality are so different that they should be measured separately, and they attempt to develop a scale for measuring rationality, analogous to the IQ test for general intelligence.  This is one of my all-time favorite books, because its contents (especially the first 60 pages) are so critical.  The downside:  it’s written by academics, for academics, and if you really want to understand it, you’ll need to spend a lot of time reviewing and contemplating.  Read and understand Kahneman’s book first.  If you do, this book will make more sense.

 

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4.  The Bias that Divides Us:  The Science and Politics of Myside Thinking.  Keith Stanovich, 2021.  

 

          Okay, so two of the first four books in this list are by Stanovich.  Yes, he’s my favorite author, and he's one of my favorite thinkers.  His work and his insights are that important.  This book explains all you need to know about myside bias, that all-encompassing bias that permeates all of our political (and other) thinking.  As I explain above, Stanovich is an academic, and while his writing can be understood by all, he writes for academics.  This book isn’t meant to be read and fully understood after a single afternoon of reading at the beach …

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5.  The Righteous Mind:  Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion, by Jonathan Haidt.  

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          While my own book and my website focus predominantly on epistemic reasoning (what is true and what is false), Haidt focusses on moral reasoning (what is right and what is wrong).  He explains that neither of the two political sides in America are more or less moral than the other side; they just focus more heavily on different moral principles.  He also explains that just as people reason in a backward fashion when they form political beliefs (first the belief, then the supporting evidence), people tend to reason in a backward fashion when they reach a conclusion about a moral issue.  First, they decide whether something is right or wrong.  Only then do they find reasons to support their moral position.  

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6.  Expert Political Judgment:  How Good Is It?  How Can We Know?  Philip Tetlock, 2005.  

 

          Tetlock takes an academic dive into the political judgments and prognostications of so-called “experts,” presenting the findings of his broad, multi-year research project into the issue.  The bottom line:  there are traits that are associated with higher than average political judgment and prediction ability, but these traits do not correlate with one’s ability to find their way to a spot on a television news program, nor with the degree to which one projects a high level of confidence!

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7.  Rationality.  Steven Pinker, 2021.  

 

          While Pinker touches on political thinking and does cover heuristics and biases in this book, he does so somewhat superficially.  This is predominantly a book about mindware, those forms of specialized process thinking that together comprise one of Stanovich’s three components of epistemically rational thinking:  scientific thinking, probabilistic (i.e. Bayesian) reasoning, statistical thinking, and several others.  It’s written for the general reader, but as is the case for most of the other books on this list, it’s meaty and is not a quick read.

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8.  Evolutionary Psychology:  The New Science of the Mind, 6th Edition.  David M. Buss, 2019. 

 

          Warning:  this is a textbook, on the field of evolutionary psychology.  Our bodies were designed by the forces of evolution to adapt to the environments in which our ancestors lived, so why wouldn’t our brains and our minds have been designed similarly?  The field of EP is based on the concept that our brains have specialized cognitive mechanisms, or ways of thinking, that evolved via the process of natural selection.  

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9.  The Enigma of Reason.   Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber.  

 

          Mercier and Sperber explain how people reason (via intuitive inference, they claim), and trace human reasoning’s evolutionary roots.  The duo theorizes that reasoning evolved for the primary purpose of forming arguments and interpreting the arguments of others, which they claim was critical for our ancestors’ ability to communicate and cooperate.  According to their theory, reasoning did not evolve for the purpose of discovering objective truth.  Rather, it developed for the purpsose of winning arguments.  It follows that myside bias may be a feature, not a bug. 

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10.  From Bacteria to Bach and Back:  The Evolution of Human Minds.  Daniel C. Dennett, 2017.  

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          How and why did humans develop the abilities to learn, reason, and communicate that separates them from all other animals?  Dennett offers a compelling theory for where consciousness came from.  He argues that human consciousness and human culture co-evolved -- that just as genes evolved via the process of natural selection, so did memes, or individual bits of human culture.

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11.  Nudge:  The Final Edition.  Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunnstein, 2021.

 

          Thaler and Sunnstein introduce the concept of “libertarian paternalism.  They argue that because so many people have incomplete information, have incomplete self-control, and use heuristics- and biases-based processing to make judgments, the government should help change peoples’ behavior by making indiscrete changes in their “choice architecture," the context in which they make decisions.  By changing the way energy consumption-related information is presented and framed, by changing default options on retirement plan enrollment forms, and by changing food labelling, as examples, people can be greatly influenced to make better decisions related to energy use, budgeting and investing, and health.  The authors clearly argue that nudging should be used for good ends.  It's easy to see, of course, how nudging could be abused.​

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More book suggestions coming soon!