Recent popular books on human irrationality to recommend to your friends

12 Post author: lukeprog 11 August 2011 06:00AM

 

Veteran Less Wrongers are unlikely to find anything new here, but I've found the examples and exposition herein to be useful when I try to explain rationality concepts to other people in a fun and concise way.

 

Comments (15)

Comment author: djcb 11 August 2011 08:47:32PM *  4 points [-]

Also, Dan Ariely's second book, The Upside of Irrationality is pretty good. For an introduction, I can recommmend Ariely's TED-talks.

Then, for the other books, Í read Sway, which was not bad, but not outstanding either.

I very much liked The Invisible Gorilla though, whose author did a good job of defending everyday-rationality, for example with respect to the 'antivax'-movement.

Lukeprog: of the other books, are there any you specifically recommend?

Comment author: florian 11 August 2011 04:36:10PM 2 points [-]

I recently read Stuart Sutherland's Irrationality, which also explains a lot of the more common biases and errors in reasoning. Decent book, but -again- probably not a lot of new ideas for less wrongers.

Comment author: lukeprog 11 August 2011 06:17:20PM 1 point [-]

Sutherland's book is good but older.

Comment author: florian 11 August 2011 06:41:53PM 1 point [-]

Sorry, I somehow missed the "recent" in the title.

Comment author: Dr_Manhattan 11 August 2011 05:13:22PM 0 points [-]

I read a number of these but particularly liked Sutherland, don't remember why tho.

Comment author: [deleted] 12 August 2011 04:12:00AM *  1 point [-]

I credit On Being Certain with giving me my 2011 Heuristic of the Year: "Does this 'aha' feeling indicate actual knowledge?"

p.s. I'm an idiot. Where did the HTML cheat sheet for comments go?

Comment author: wedrifid 12 August 2011 04:31:20AM 2 points [-]

p.s. I'm an idiot. Where did the HTML cheat sheet for comments go?

The only 'idiocy' is the 'HTML' assumption. You have the HTML right but the markdown that you need is an asterix on either side (or, equivalently, an underscore on either side). The references is in the 'Help' link on the bottom right of the comment box.

Comment author: [deleted] 12 August 2011 04:43:41AM 1 point [-]

Thanks... but I see no such 'Help' link. I use Chrome. Are there issues with Chrome?

Comment author: wedrifid 12 August 2011 04:56:19AM *  2 points [-]

Thanks... but I see no such 'Help' link. I use Chrome. Are there issues with Chrome?

I use Chrome myself but now notice that there is no link appearing now. 30 seconds debugging informs me that now there is no 'Help' when replying directly to a comment on the main page but there is the link when replying via 'Recent comments'. Bug!

For now: the wiki.

Comment author: [deleted] 12 August 2011 05:04:06AM 0 points [-]

Bookmarked. Appreciated.

Comment author: mstevens 11 August 2011 04:47:06PM 1 point [-]

It's maybe not so recent, but I'm a huge fan of Influence, and it's extremely readable.

Comment author: Fhyve 04 June 2013 07:45:52PM 0 points [-]

When was this last updated? Has anything new come out since?

Comment author: beoShaffer 15 August 2011 04:50:58AM 0 points [-]

I found sway entertaining and the fact that I had already been exposed to the concept of bias probably made me slightly more open to less wrong. At the same time I don't think I got much direct benefit from it rationality wise.

Comment author: alexvermeer 11 August 2011 08:08:41PM 0 points [-]

Awesome, thanks for the list!

I'm part-way through Mistakes Were Made and it's great so far.

Comment author: torekp 13 August 2011 08:10:47PM 0 points [-]

Mistakes Were Made is immensely enjoyable.