Why read Rationality for Mortals?

Book cover of Rationality for Mortals: How People Cope with Uncertainty

Book description

Gerd Gigerenzer's influential work examines the rationality of individuals not from the perspective of logic or probability, but from the point of view of adaptation to the real world of human behavior and interaction with the environment. Seen from this perspective, human behavior is more rational than it might otherwise…

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Why read it?

2 authors picked Rationality for Mortals as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Helge Thorbjørnsen

Author

Ok: This is not an easy read like the other books I’ve recommended.

In fact, some parts of it require quite a lot of the reader. But it is a very smart and novel book on human reasoning, uncertainty, and probability.

Gigerenzer elegantly shows us how human behavior often is more rational than one might think, and his concept of “fast and frugal heuristics” is instrumental in understanding how we deal with probability and risk.

If you’ve read Thinking Fast and Slow by Kahneman and are open to some new and different perspectives on rationality and decision-making, this is your…

From Helge's list on who and what influences our thoughts and behavior.

Steven Pinker

Author

Gigerenzer is in some ways the un-Tversky-and-Kahneman, emphasizing the ways in which humans are more rational than they seem, and the ways that difficult problems can be made intuitive.

This lively collection explains the surprisingly deep and perplexing question of what “probability” even means, and presents many puzzles form everyday reckoning of risk, including: What does the weathercaster mean when she says “There’s a 30 percent chance of rain”?

From Steven's list on rationality and why it matters.