Enlightenment Now

  46. Ghitza & Gelman 2014; see also Kohut et al. 2011; Taylor 2016a, 2016b.

  47. Based loosely on a quotation from the physicist Max Planck.

  48. Voter turnout: H. Enten, “Registered Voters Who Stayed Home Probably Cost Clinton the Election,” FiveThirtyEight, Jan. 5, 2017, https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/registered-voters-who-stayed-home-probably-cost-clinton-the-election/. A. Payne, “Brits Who Didn’t Vote in the EU Referendum Now Wish They Voted Against Brexit,” Business Insider, Sept. 23, 2016. A. Rhodes, “Young People—If You’re So Upset by the Outcome of the EU Referendum, Then Why Didn’t You Get Out and Vote?” The Independent, June 27, 2016.

  49. Publius Decius Mus 2016. In 2017, the author of the pseudonymous piece, Michael Anton, joined the Trump administration as a national security official.

  50. C. R. Ketcham, “Anarchists for Donald Trump—Let the Empire Burn,” Daily Beast, June 9, 2016, http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/06/09/anarchists-for-donald-trump-let-the-empire-burn.html.

  51. A similar argument was made by D. Bornstein & T. Rosenberg, “When Reportage Turns to Cynicism,” New York Times, Nov. 15, 2016, quoted in chapter 4.

  52. Berlin 1988/2013, p. 15.

  53. Excerpt from a talk, shared in a personal communication; adapted from Kelly 2016, pp. 13–14.

  54. “Pessimistic hopefulness” is from the journalist Yuval Levin (2017). “Radical incrementalism” is originally from the political scientist Aaron Wildavsky, recently revived by Halpern & Mason 2015.

  55. The term possibilism had previously been coined by the economist Albert Hirschman (1971). Rosling was quoted in “Making Data Dance,” The Economist, Dec. 9, 2010.

  CHAPTER 21: REASON

  1. Recent examples (not from psychologists): J. Gray, “The Child-Like Faith in Reason,” BBC News Magazine, July 18, 2014; C. Bradatan, “Our Delight in Destruction,” New York Times, March 27, 2017.

  2. Nagel 1997, pp. 14–15. “One can’t criticize something with nothing”: p. 20.

  3. Transcendental arguments: Bardon (undated).

  4. Nagel 1997, p. 35, attributes the phrase “One thought too many” to the philosopher Bernard Williams, who used it to make a different point. For more on why “believing in reason” is one thought too many, and why explicit deduction has to stop somewhere, see Pinker 1997/2009, pp. 98–99.

  5. See the references in chapter 2, notes 22–25.

  6. See the references in chapter 1, notes 4 and 9. Kant’s metaphor refers to the “unsocial sociability” of humans, who differ from trees in a crowded forest that grow straight to stay out of each other’s shadows. It has been interpreted as applying to reason insofar as humans have difficulty seeing the advantages of cooperation. (Thanks to Anthony Pagden for pointing this out to me.)

  7. Selection for rationality: Pinker 1997/2009, chaps. 2 and 5; Pinker 2010; Tooby & DeVore 1987; Norman 2016.

  8. Personal communication, Jan. 5, 2017; for supporting detail, see Liebenberg 1990, 2014.

  9. Liebenberg 2014, pp. 191–92.

  10. Shtulman 2005; see also Rice, Olson, & Colbert 2011.

  11. Evolution as a litmus for religiosity: Roos 2012.

  12. Kahan 2015.

  13. Climate literacy: Kahan 2015; Kahan, Wittlin, et al. 2011. Ozone hole, toxic waste dumps, and climate change: Bostrom et al. 1994.

  14. Pew Research Center 2015b; see Jones, Cox, & Navarro-Rivera 2014, for similar data.

  15. Kahan: Braman et al. 2007; Eastop 2015; Kahan 2015; Kahan, Jenkins-Smith, & Braman 2011; Kahan, Jenkins-Smith, et al. 2012; Kahan, Wittlin, et al. 2011.

  16. Kahan, Wittlin, et al. 2011, p. 15.

  17. Tragedy of the Belief Commons: Kahan 2012; Kahan, Wittlin, et al. 2011. Kahan calls it the Tragedy of the Risk-Perception Commons.

  18. A. Marcotte, “It’s Science, Stupid: Why Do Trump Supporters Believe So Many Things That Are Crazy and Wrong?” Salon, Sept. 30, 2016.

  19. Blue lies: J. A. Smith, “How the Science of ‘Blue Lies’ May Explain Trump’s Support,” Scientific American, March 24, 2017.

  20. Tooby 2017.

  21. Motivated reasoning: Kunda 1990. My-Side bias: Baron 1993. Biased evaluation: Lord, Ross, & Lepper 1979; Taber & Lodge 2006. See also Mercier & Sperber 2011, for a review.

  22. Hastorf & Cantril 1954.

  23. Testosterone and elections: Stanton et al. 2009.

  24. Polarizing effect of evidence: Lord, Ross, & Lepper 1979. For updates, see Taber & Lodge 2006 and Mercier & Sperber 2011.

  25. Political engagement as sports fandom: Somin 2016.

  26. Kahan, Peters, et al. 2012; Kahan, Wittlin, et al. 2011.

  27. Kahan, Braman, et al. 2009.

  28. M. Kaplan, “The Most Depressing Discovery About the Brain, Ever,” Alternet, Sept. 16, 2013, http://www.alternet.org/media/most-depressing-discovery-about-brain-ever. Study itself: Kahan, Peters, et al. 2013.

  29. E. Klein, “How Politics Makes Us Stupid,” Vox, April 6, 2014; C. Mooney, “Science Confirms: Politics Wrecks Your Ability to Do Math,” Grist, Sept. 8, 2013.

  30. Bias bias (actually called the “bias blind spot”): Pronin, Lin, & Ross 2002.

  31. Verhulst, Eaves, & Hatemi 2015.

  32. Rigged studies on prejudice: Duarte et al. 2015.

  33. Economic illiteracy among leftists: Buturovic & Klein 2010; see also Caplan 2007.

  34. Economic illiteracy follow-up and retraction: Klein & Buturovic 2011.

  35. D. Klein, “I Was Wrong, and So Are You,” The Atlantic, Dec. 2011.

  36. See Pinker 2011, chaps. 3–5.

  37. Deaths from communism: Courtois et al. 1999; Rummel 1997; White 2011; see also Pinker 2011, chaps. 4–5.

  38. Marxists among social scientists: Gross & Simmons 2014.

  39. According to the 2016 Index of Economic Freedom compiled by the Wall Street Journal and the Heritage Foundation (http://www.heritage.org/index/ranking), New Zealand, Canada, Ireland, the United Kingdom, and Denmark equal or exceed the United States in economic freedom. All but Canada exceed the United States in the proportion of GDP devoted to social spending (OECD 2014).

  40. The trouble with right-wing libertarianism: Friedman 1997; J. Taylor, “Is There a Future for Libertarianism?” RealClearPolicy, Feb. 23, 2016, http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2016/02/23/is_there_a_future_for_libertarianism_1563.html; M. Lind, “The Question Libertarians Just Can’t Answer,” Salon, June 4, 2013; B. Lindsay, “Liberaltarians,” New Republic, Dec. 4, 2006; W. Wilkinson, “Libertarian Principles, Niskanen, and Welfare Policy,” Niskanen blog, March 29, 2016, https://niskanencenter.org/blog/libertarian-principles-niskanen-and-welfare-policy/.

  41. The road to totalitarianism: Payne 2005.

  42. Though the United States has the world’s highest GDP, it falls in 13th place in happiness (Helliwell, Layard, & Sachs 2016), 8th in the UN’s Human Development Index (Roser 2016h), and 19th in the Social Progress Index (Porter, Stern, & Green 2016). Recall that social transfers boost the Human Development Index up to around 25–30 percent of GDP (Prados de la Escosura 2015); the United States allocates around 19 percent.

  43. Visions of the left and right: Pinker 2002/2016; Sowell 1987, chap. 16.

  44. The problems with predictions: Gardner 2010; Mellers et al. 2014; Silver 2015; Tetlock & Gardner 2015; Tetlock, Mellers, & Scoblic 2017.

  45. N. Silver, “Why FiveThirtyEight Gave Trump a Better Chance Than Almost Anyone Else,” FiveThirtyEight, Nov. 11, 2016, http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-fivethirtyeight-gave-trump-a-better-chance-than-almost-anyone-else/.

  46. Tetlock & Gardner 2015, p. 68.

  47. Tetlock & Gardner 2015, p. 69.

  48. Active open-mindedness: Baron 1993.

  49. Tetlock 2015.

  50. Increasing political polarizatio
n: Pew Research Center 2014.

  51. Data from the General Social Survey, http://gss.norc.org, compiled in Abrams 2016.

  52. Abrams 2016.

  53. Political orientations of college faculty: Eagen et al. 2014; Gross & Simmons 2014; E. Schwitzgebel, “Political Affiliations of American Philosophers, Political Scientists, and Other Academics,” Splintered Mind, http://schwitzsplinters.blogspot.hk/2008/06/political-affiliations-of-american.html. See also N. Kristof, “A Confession of Liberal Intolerance,” New York Times, May 7, 2016.

  54. Liberal tilt of journalism: In 2013, the ratio of Democrats to Republicans among American journalists was four to one, though a majority were Independent (50.2 percent) or Other (14.6 percent); Willnat & Weaver 2014, p. 11. A recent content analysis suggests that newspapers slant a bit to the left, but so do their readers; Gentzkow & Shapiro 2010.

  55. Social forces congenial to liberals versus conservatives: Sowell 1987.

  56. Intellectual liberals at the forefront: Grayling 2007; Hunt 2007.

  57. We are all liberals: Courtwright 2010; Nash 2009; Welzel 2013.

  58. Political bias in science: Jussim et al. 2017. Political bias in medicine: Satel 2000.

  59. Duarte et al. 2015.

  60. “Look different but think alike”: from the civil liberties lawyer Harvey Silverglate.

  61. Duarte et al. 2015 includes thirty-three commentaries, many critical but all respectful, and the authors’ response. The Blank Slate won prizes from two divisions of the American Psychological Association.

  62. N. Kristof, “A Confession of Liberal Intolerance,” New York Times, May 7, 2016; N. Kristof, “The Liberal Blind Spot,” New York Times, May 28, 2016.

  63. J. McWhorter, “Antiracism, Our Flawed New Religion,” Daily Beast, July 27, 2015.

  64. Illiberalism on campus and social justice warriors: Lukianoff 2012, 2014; G. Lukianoff & J. Haidt, “The Coddling of the American Mind,” The Atlantic, Sept. 2015; L. Jussim, “Mostly Leftist Threats to Mostly Campus Speech,” Psychology Today blog, Nov. 23, 2015, https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/rabble-rouser/201511/mostly-leftist-threats-mostly-campus-speech.

  65. Public shaming: D. Lat, “The Harvard Email Controversy: How It All Began,” Above the Law, May 3, 2010, http://abovethelaw.com/2010/05/the-harvard-email-controversy-how-it-all-began/.

  66. Stalinesque investigations: Dreger 2015; L. Kipnis, “In Her Own Words: Title IX Inquisition at Northwestern,” TheFire.org, https://www.thefire.org/in-her-own-words-laura-kipnis-title-ix-inquisition-at-northwestern-video/; see also note 64 above.

  67. Unintended comedy: G. Lukianoff & J. Haidt, “The Coddling of the American Mind,” The Atlantic, Sept. 2015; C. Friedersdorf, “The New Intolerance of Student Activism,” The Atlantic, Nov. 9, 2015; J. M. Moyer, “University Yoga Class Canceled Because of ‘Oppression, Cultural Genocide,’” Washington Post, Nov. 23, 2015.

  68. Comedians are not amused: G. Lukianoff & J. Haidt, “The Coddling of the American Mind,” The Atlantic, Sept. 2015; T. Kingkade, “Chris Rock Stopped Playing Colleges Because They’re ‘Too Conservative,’” Huffington Post, Dec. 2, 2014. See also the 2015 documentary, Can We Take a Joke?

  69. Diversity of opinions within academia: Shields & Dunn 2016.

  70. The earliest version was expressed by Samuel Johnson; see G. O’Toole, “Academic Politics Are So Vicious Because the Stakes Are So Small,” Quote Investigator, Aug. 18, 2013, http://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/08/18/acad-politics/.

  71. Extremist, antidemocratic Republicans: Mann & Ornstein 2012/2016.

  72. Cynicism about democracy: Foa & Mounk 2016; Inglehart 2016.

  73. Right-wing anti-intellectualism has been deplored by conservatives themselves in books like Charlie Sykes’s How the Right Lost Its Mind (2017) and Matt Lewis’s Too Dumb to Fail (2016).

  74. Centrality of reason: Nagel 1997; Norman 2016.

  75. Extraordinary popular delusions: McKay 1841/1995; see also K. Malik, “All the Fake News That Was Fit to Print,” New York Times, Dec. 4, 2016.

  76. A. D. Holan, “All Politicians Lie. Some Lie More Than Others,” New York Times, Dec. 11, 2015.

  77. In analyzing history’s deadliest conflicts, Matthew White comments, “I’m amazed at how often the immediate cause of a conflict is a mistake, unfounded suspicion, or rumor.” In addition to the first two listed here he includes the First World War, Sino-Japanese War, Seven Years’ War, Second French War of Religion, An Lushan Rebellion in China, Indonesian Purge, and Russia’s Time of Troubles; White 2011, p. 537.

  78. Opinion of Judge Leon M. Bazile, Jan. 22, 1965, Encyclopedia Virginia, http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Opinion_of_Judge_Leon_M_Bazile_January_22_1965.

  79. S. Sontag, “Some Thoughts on the Right Way (for Us) to Love the Cuban Revolution,” Ramparts, April 1969, pp. 6–19. Sontag went on to claim that the homosexuals “have long since been sent home,” but gays continued to be sent to forced labor camps in Cuba throughout the 1960s and 1970s. See “Concentration Camps in Cuba: The UMAP,” Totalitarian Images, Feb. 6, 2010, http://totalitarianimages.blogspot.com/2010/02/concentration-camps-in-cuba-umap.html, and J. Halatyn, “From Persecution to Acceptance? The History of LGBT Rights in Cuba,” Cutting Edge, Oct. 24, 2012, http://www.thecuttingedgenews.com/index.php?article=76818.

  80. Affective tipping point: Redlawsk, Civettini, & Emmerson 2010.

  81. Naked emperors and common knowledge: Pinker 2007a; Thomas et al. 2014; Thomas, DeScioli, & Pinker 2018.

  82. For an excellent summary of common fallacies, see the Web site and poster “Thou shalt not commit logical fallacies,” https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/. Critical thinking curricula: Willingham 2007.

  83. Debiasing: Bond 2009; Gigerenzer 1991; Gigerenzer & Hoffrage 1995; Lilienfeld, Ammirati, & Landfield 2009; Mellers et al. 2014; Morewedge et al. 2015.

  84. The trouble with critical-thinking curricula: Willingham 2007.

  85. Effective debiasing: Bond 2009; Gigerenzer 1991; Gigerenzer & Hoffrage 1995; Lilienfeld, Ammirati, & Landfield 2009; Mellers et al. 2014; Mercier & Sperber 2011; Morewedge et al. 2015; Tetlock & Gardner 2015; Willingham 2007.

  86. Giving debiasing away: Lilienfeld, Ammirati, & Landfield 2009.

  87. Anonymous, quoted in P. Voosen, “Striving for a Climate Change,” Chronicle Review of Higher Education, Nov. 3, 2014.

  88. Improving argument: Kuhn 1991; Mercier & Sperber 2011, 2017; Sloman & Fernbach 2017.

  89. Truth wins: Mercier & Sperber 2011.

  90. Adversarial collaboration: Mellers, Hertwig, & Kahneman 2001.

  91. The Illusion of Explanatory Depth: Rozenblit & Keil 2002. Using the illusion to debias: Sloman & Fernbach 2017.

  92. Mercier & Sperber 2011, p. 72; Mercier & Sperber 2017.

  93. More rational journalism: Silver 2015; A. D. Holan, “All Politicians Lie. Some Lie More Than Others,” New York Times, Dec. 11, 2015.

  94. More rational intelligence-gathering: Tetlock & Gardner 2015; Tetlock, Mellers, & Scoblic 2017.

  95. More rational medicine: Topol 2012.

  96. More rational psychotherapy: T. Rousmaniere, “What Your Therapist Doesn’t Know,” The Atlantic, April 2017.

  97. More rational crimefighting: Abt & Winship 2016; Latzer 2016.

  98. More rational international development: Banerjee & Duflo 2011.

  99. More rational altruism: MacAskill 2015.

  100. More rational sports: Lewis 2016.

  101. “What Exactly Is the ‘Rationality Community’?” LessWrong, http://lesswrong.com/lw/ov2/what_exactly_is_the_rationality_community/.

  102. More rational governance: Behavioral Insights Team 2015; Haskins & Margolis 2014; Schuck 2015; Sunstein 2013; D. Leonhard, “The Quiet Movement to Make Government Fail Less Often,” New York Times, July 15, 2014.

  103. Democrac
y versus rationality: Achens & Bartels 2016; Brennan 2016; Caplan 2007; Mueller 1999; Somin 2016.

  104. Plato and democracy: Goldstein 2013.

  105. Kahan, Wittlin, et al. 2011, p. 16.

  106. HPV versus hep B: E. Klein, “How Politics Makes Us Stupid,” Vox, April 6, 2014.

  107. Party over policy: Cohen 2003.

  108. Evidence that same-side spokespeople can change minds: Nyhan 2013.

  109. Kahan, Jenkins-Smith, et al. 2012.

  110. Depoliticized Florida compact: Kahan 2015.

  111. Chicago Way: Sean Connery’s Jim Malone in The Untouchables (1987). GRIT: Osgood 1962.

  CHAPTER 22: SCIENCE

  1. The example is from Murray 2003.

  2. Carroll 2016, p. 426.

  3. Naming species: Costello, May, & Stork 2013. The estimate refers to eukaryotic species (those with a nucleus, excluding viruses and bacteria).

  4. The party of stupid: See chapter 21, notes 71 and 73.

  5. Mooney 2005; see also Pinker 2008b.

  6. Lamar Smith and the House Science Committee: J. D. Trout, “The House Science Committee Hates Science and Should Be Disbanded,” Salon, May 17, 2016.

  7. J. Mervis, “Updated: U.S. House Passes Controversial Bill on NSF Research,” Science, Feb. 11, 2016.

  8. From Note-book of Anton Chekhov. The quote continues, “What is national is no longer science.”

  9. J. Lears, “Same Old New Atheism: On Sam Harris,” The Nation, April 27, 2011.

  10. L. Kass, “Keeping Life Human: Science, Religion, and the Soul,” Wriston Lecture, Manhattan Institute, Oct. 18, 2007, https://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/2007-wriston-lecture-keeping-life-human-science-religion-and-soul-8894.html. See also L. Kass, “Science, Religion, and the Human Future,” Commentary, April 2007, pp. 36–48.