From this month's Open Thread, Stirling Westrup asks:
I second the question. My own recommendations will be found in the comments.
From this month's Open Thread, Stirling Westrup asks:
I second the question. My own recommendations will be found in the comments.
For a lay reader looking for an introduction to ev-psych, I advise against Wright's "The Moral Animal", suggested in Eliezer's first comment. It's been several years since I read it, but I remember it being boring, unenlightening, and bogged down with biographical vignettes of Charles Darwin. It might be a good intro for people who enjoy history and literature more than science texts, but this is pure speculation--I know few of these people and rarely give them books. If you want a light intro without the fluff, I'd suggest "Evolutionary Psychology: An Introduction" by Workman and Reader, a completely nontechnical textbook that actually spends more time explaining ev-psych than trying to convince the reader it's not an evil, misogynistic pseudoscience. It's the sort of text high-school (or even middle-school) teachers would use in a parallel universe where "evolutionary psychology" has a redundant adjective.
There is much mention in this blog about Bayesian rationality, or the use of Bayes' methods in decision making. Now, I studied Bayes conditional probabilities in Statistics class in University many years ago, but my knowledge of the theory ends there. Can you recommend any good books on the subject?
In fact, do you folks have a recommended reading list (other than this blog, of course!) for those trying to identify and overcome their own biases?