Steven Pinker
Author
Language
English
Description
The follow-up to Pinker's groundbreaking The Better Angels of Our Nature presents the big picture of human progress: people are living longer, healthier, freer, and happier lives, and while our problems are formidable, the solutions lie in the Enlightenment ideal of using reason and science. Far from being a naïve hope, the Enlightenment, we now know, has worked. But more than ever, it needs a vigorous defense. The Enlightenment project swims against...
Author
Language
English
Description
"Can reading a book make you more rational? Can it explain why there seems to be so much irrationality in the world, including, let's be honest, in each of us? These are the goals of Steven Pinker's follow-up to Enlightenment Now (Bill Gates's "new favorite book of all time"). Humans today are often portrayed as cavemen out of time, poised to react to a lion in the grass with a suite of biases, blind spots, fallacies, and illusions. But this, Pinker...
Author
Pub. Date
2011.
Language
English
Formats
Description
We've all asked, "What is the world coming to?" But we seldom ask, "How bad was the world in the past?" In this startling new book, cognitive scientist Steven Pinker shows that the past was much worse. Evidence of a bloody history has always been around us: genocides in the Old Testament, gory mutilations in Shakespeare and Grimm, monarchs who beheaded their relatives, and American founders who dueled with their rivals. The murder rate in medieval...
Author
Pub. Date
2014.
Language
English
Formats
Description
" A short and entertaining book on the modern art of writing well by New York Times bestselling author Steven Pinker Why is so much writing so bad, and how can we make it better? Is the English language being corrupted by texting and social media? Do the kids today even care about good writing? Why should any of us care? In The Sense of Style, the bestselling linguist and cognitive scientist Steven Pinker answers these questions and more. Rethinking...
Author
Pub. Date
2007.
Physical Desc
ix, 499 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm
Language
English
Description
Psychologist Pinker explains how the mind works in a completely new way--by examining how we use words. Every time we swear, we reveal something about human emotions. When we use an innuendo to convey a bribe, threat, or sexual come-on (rather than just blurting it out), we disclose something about human relationships. Our use of prepositions and tenses tap into peculiarly human concepts of space and time, and our nouns and verbs tap into mental models...
Author
Language
English
Description
A former Google data scientist presents an insider's look at what the vast, instantly available amounts of information from the Internet can reveal about human civilization and society.
"How much sex are people really having? How many Americans are actually racist? Is America experiencing a hidden back-alley abortion crisis? Can you game the stock market? Does violent entertainment increase the rate of violent crime? Do parents treat sons differently...
Author
Pub. Date
2015.
Physical Desc
xvi, 428 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm
Language
English
Description
Michael S. Gazzaniga, one of the most important neuroscientists of the twentieth century, gives us an exciting behind-the-scenes look at his seminal work on that unlikely couple, the right and left brain.
Author
Pub. Date
[2021]
Physical Desc
397 pages ; 23 cm
Language
English
Description
"Philosopher Andy Norman dives into the world of mind-parasites, ideas that cause destructive thinking and extremism, and describes how to inoculate your mind to keep it safe from bad ideas"--
COVID denial persists in the face of overwhelming evidence. Anti-vaxxers compromise public health. American Nazis march openly in the streets. Flat Earth theory is back. Norman shows that these phenomena share a root cause: We live in a time when the so-called...
9) What to think about machines that think: today's leading thinkers on the age of machine intelligence
Pub. Date
[2015]
Physical Desc
xxvi, 541 pages ; 21 cm
Language
English
Description
Collects the thoughts of almost two hundred of today's leading thinkers on the issue of artifical intelligence.