FIVE ANTI-B.S. BOOKS
“It isn’t what we know that gives us trouble. It’s what we know that ain’t so.” — Will Rogers
Want to understand and battle the B.S.? Here are five books that will get you started in the struggle for accuracy, knowledge, and rational answers to lies, conspiracy theories, and alt-truths.
1. Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error, by Kathryn Schulz — Schulz, a veteran New Yorker writer, analyzes the psychology of error. Sure, we all make mistakes but who can admit “being wrong?” And when “those people” are wrong, wrong, wrong, what do we, the knowing, do? First, we think, “Oh, I’ll just tell them the truth and they’ll ‘get it.’” When they still don’t, we think, “Jeez, they’re kinda stupid.” And when they still don’t, we jump more and more quickly these days to “they’re evil. They’re the enemy.” Sound familiar?
2. The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth, by Jonathan Rausch — A fascinating exploration of how we know what we know and why we don’t seem so certain of anything anymore. Knowledge, writes Rausch, depends on agreement. “Knowledge is a conversation, not a destination. It is a process, a journey—a journey we take together, not alone.”
3. The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America, by Daniel Boorstin — Way way back, when TV was fairly new and the Internet was not even imagined, historian Boorstin worried about an America dominated by images, celebrity culture, and “pseudo-events.” “While The Image may have arrived on the scene, chronologically, before the comings of Twitter and Kimye. . .the book also managed to predict them—so neatly that it reads not just as prescience, but as prophesy.” — The Atlantic
4. Conspiracy: Why the Rational Believe the Irrational, by Michael Schermer — There are some solid reasons to believe B.S., this long-time skeptic argues. 1) Everybody in your peer group believes it, so disagreeing is risky; 2) conspiracies “provide all-encompassing explanations for myriad social problems;” 3) conspiracies tap deep-seeded myths about power and powerlessness; and 4) from Watergate to the Pentagon Papers, some conspiracies were real. So what to do? Schermer offers several tips for speaking truth to B.S.
5. Thinking Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman — Kahneman’s pioneering research revealed the many fallacies that guide our thinking. Why are we drawn to opinions we agree with (cognitive bias)? Why do we fear remote events just because they are in the news (the Availability Heuristic)? Why do we sanctify some leaders (the Halo Effect)? Why is human thought, in short, so easily led astray? (NOTE: A less detailed, more narrative explanation of Kahneman’s work is Michael Lewis’ The Undoing Project.