Steven Pinker
Author
Publisher
Not Supplied
Pub. Date
2011.
Language
English
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
Publisher
Not Supplied
Pub. Date
Not Supplied
Language
English
Description
Is the world falling apart? Is progress obsolete? In this elegant assessment of the human condition in the third millennium, cognitive scientist and public intellectual Steven Pinker urges us to stop back from the gory headlines and prophecies of doom, which play to our psychological biases. Instead, follow the data: In seventy-five jaw-dropping graphs, Pinker shows that life, health, prosperity, safety, peace, knowledge, and happiness are on the...
Author
Series
Cognitive science volume 7
Publisher
Harvard University Press
Pub. Date
Not Supplied
Language
English
Formats
Author
Publisher
Viking
Pub. Date
2014.
Language
English
Description
"A short and entertaining book on the modern art of writing well. 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 the usage guide for the 21st century, Pinker doesn't...
Author
Publisher
Not Supplied
Pub. Date
[2021]
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
Publisher
Dey St., an imprint of William Morrow
Pub. Date
[2017]
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...
15) What to think about machines that think: today's leading thinkers on the age of machine intelligence
Series
Publisher
Harper Perennial
Pub. Date
[2015]
Language
English
Description
Collects the thoughts of almost two hundred of today's leading thinkers on the issue of artifical intelligence.
Author
Publisher
Harper Wave, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers
Pub. Date
[2021]
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...
Series
Publisher
House of Anansi Press
Pub. Date
2016.
Language
English
Description
"Progress. It is one of the animating concepts of the modern era. From the Enlightenment onwards, the West has had an enduring belief that through the evolution of institutions, innovations, and ideas, the human condition is improving. This process is supposedly accelerating as new technologies, individual freedoms, and the spread of global norms empower individuals and societies around the world. But is progress inevitable? Its critics argue that...