Is This An Overview?
Using rational reasoning skills, humans have been able to achieve material and scientific progress. Rationality is composed of cognitive tools that people use to understand a situation, to find potential solutions to a problem. Rationality is often found in groups, as each individual reciprocates in finding each other’s fallacies. Reason can reason about reason, which enables people to disagree and find alternative solutions. There are situations in which people can find rational reasons to behave irrationally, situations in which there is strategic value in ignorance. People use reasoning skills when they argue, persuade, evaluate, accept, or reject an argument instead of threatening and coercing each other.

Various social and institutional systems used force to shape others’ beliefs rather than use persuasion. The acceptable methods of forcing beliefs on others have changed, but even institutions that are meant to evaluate ideas, find ways to suppress divergent views. The problem of using force, is that force can leave the opposition with no alternative other than to reciprocate with force. Relative power can shift to the opposition who will reciprocate the lack of willingness to be heard on merits.

Caveats?
The book expresses rationality through various methods such as formal logic, game theory, and probability. Although the decision theory and mathematics are provided in an introductory form, a reader who has not yet learned the ideas might need to apply more effort to understand them such as by researching for more details and applications. The way some parts are written can contradict values in other parts, such as highlighting individual failures of rationality even though the group process of finding rationality is understood, and sharing causes to biases but providing various examples that enable the biases to occur. ( )

Read the first, and last two chapters. The rest is filler. Text also contains a some amount of cherry-picked data which didn't age well ( )

3.5 stars I guess. I really loved Pinker’s earlier books about linguistics and psychology. There’s certainly some good stuff in this book, but I don’t think he covered the topic all that well. There were reminders of his good sense of humor and his good writing, but not so much. I’m happy that he uses interesting words, but he may have gone a little overboard in using obscure terminology. ( )

A great read. And a few great jokes A man prays to God: I've been a good person, lead a righteous right, please Lord, I've never asked for anything before, but, please, can I win the lottery? A week goes by, then a month, then a year. The man prays again: Please, Lord, I've been patient but I ask again, can I win the lottery? The Lord responds: meet me half way, buy a lottery ticket. ( )

Excelente manual para ayudarnos a ser más racionales. ( )