The Irrational Ape
eBook - ePub

The Irrational Ape

Why Flawed Logic Puts us all at Risk and How Critical Thinking Can Save the World

  1. 400 pages
  2. English
  3. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

The Irrational Ape

Why Flawed Logic Puts us all at Risk and How Critical Thinking Can Save the World

About this book

THE IRISH TIMES TOP FIVE BESTSELLER 'A beautifully reasoned book about our own unreasonableness' Robin Ince In 1983, the reasoning of one unsung Russian narrowly averted nuclear war, proving that critical thinking can save the world. Today, facing unprecedented tides of disinformation, we're frequently misled, to our detriment. The Irrational Ape explores the reasons why we get things so wrong, illustrated with incredible stories from the comical to the catastrophic. With a cast including murderous popes, conspiracy theorists, snake-oil salesmen, dubious celebrities and superstitious pigeons, The Irrational Ape delves into how reasoning errors, skewed perceptions and even our own psychology render us so susceptible to falsehood – and how we can improve our reasoning to ensure we avoid being taken in.

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Yes, you can access The Irrational Ape by David Robert Grimes in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Biological Sciences & Science General. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

INDEX

A note about the index: The pages referenced in this index refer to the page numbers in the print edition. Clicking on a page number will take you to the ebook location that corresponds to the beginning of that page in the print edition. For a comprehensive list of locations of any word or phrase, use your reading system’s search function.
(Page numbers in italic refer to photographs, illustrations and tables; n indicates footnotes)
A
abortion, 128
absolute certainty 159
Acorah, Derek, 63
ad hominem argument, 132
affirmative conclusion from a negative premise, 51n
affirming the consequent, 29–30
affirming the disjunct, 48–9
AIDS, 374; see also HIV
al-Qaeda, 33
Aleph null, 42n
aluminium toxicity, 350n
American Academy of Pediatrics, and American College of Pediatricians, 11
American Airlines Flight 31
anti-communist belief, 133
anti-Semitism, 78
anti-vaccine proponents, see vaccines/vaccination
antibiotic resistance, 363
apophenia, 165
argument from authority, 325
arguments from nature, 112
argumentum ad conspiratio (argument to conspiracy), 36
argumentum ad hominem (arguing against the man), 107
argumentum ad logicam (argument to logic), 66
Arkhipov, Vasili, 5
Ashkenazi Jews, 102
aspartame, 318n
astrology, 371
Attenborough, Sir David, 315
authority, and weight of the evidence 311
authoritarian regimes, dark renaissance of, 17
autism, see vaccination–autism link
autistic enterocolitis, 91
availability heuristic, 353
B
backfire effect, 347n
bait-and-switch tactics, 118
Barnum, P. T., 179n
Bayes’ theorem, 198, 199, 230
begging the question, 127n
bias, 2015
paper on, 17–18
Big Pharma, 329–32
bin Laden, Osama, 146
BioInitiative Report, 46–7
Bishop, Dorothy, 48...

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Dedication
  3. Prologue
  4. Introduction: From Absurdity to Atrocity
  5. SECTION I: Without Reason
  6. SECTION II: The Pure and Simple Truth?
  7. SECTION III: Trapdoors of the Mind
  8. SECTION IV: Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics
  9. SECTION V: News of the World
  10. SECTION VI: The Candle in the Dark
  11. Epilogue
  12. Acknowledgements
  13. About the Author
  14. References and Further Reading
  15. Index
  16. Copyright