The Art of Logic in an Illogical World
Ratings4
Average rating3.8
15
Ratings4
Average rating3.8
How both logical and emotional reasoning can help us live better in our post-truth world In a world where fake news stories change election outcomes, has rationality become futile? In The Art of Logic in an Illogical World, Eugenia Cheng throws a lifeline to readers drowning in the illogic of contemporary life. Cheng is a mathematician, so she knows how to make an airtight argument. But even for her, logic sometimes falls prey to emotion, which is why she still fears flying and eats more cookies than she should. If a mathematician can't be logical, what are we to do? In this book, Cheng reveals the inner workings and limitations of logic, and explains why alogic -- for example, emotion -- is vital to how we think and communicate. Cheng shows us how to use logic and alogic together to navigate a world awash in bigotry, mansplaining, and manipulative memes. Insightful, useful, and funny, this essential book is for anyone who wants to think more clearly.
Reviews with the most likes.
An introduction to logic through the lens of debated issues in our current illogical (unreasonable?) society. Cheng provides us with a good framework to understand why certain arguments can never be fruitful if people argue from different basic assumptions and/or levels of abstraction.
Most of the book is a slow buildup on the basics, fallacies and limits of logic (possibly by overusing the white-privilege and cake examples). Slow and steady is good, but maybe it went a bit too slow. The more intriguing part comes in the last 2 chapters, when Cheng looks at the false dichotomy of Logic and Emotions and how logic should be used intelligently. Instead of giving tips for how to win debates with unreasonable people, she calls upon empathy, to help us understand where they are coming from, and altruism, to ultimately have everyone's better fortune in mind (we can choose for it not to be a zero-sum game).
An interesting perspective on debates about classification/decision-making methods: Do you care more about the false negatives (murders that go free) or false positives (innocent people locked up)?
Always a good reminder to hear that even two logical people can fail to find agreement, when arguing coming from different beliefs. And that a major sign of intelligence is, how much you're able to change your own beliefs when confronted with conflicting evidence.
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