The Art of Logic in an Illogical World

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.