Everyday Irrationality: How pseudo-scientists, lunatics, and the rest of us
systematically fail to think rationally by Robyn Dawes, Westview Press,
$25, ISBN 081336552X
IF YOU’VE ever come home from a family visit wishing that just for once you
could show your brother-in-law what a moron he is, then you’ll understand the
appeal of Everyday Irrationality.
Robyn Dawes, a psychologist at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania, wants to show us how to recognise thinking that is not merely
muddy or wrong, but “irrational” in a strict sense, in that it leads the thinker
into a self-contradiction.
Dawes developed the book…
