The Certainty Trap
Why We Need to Question Ourselves More—and How We Can Judge Others Less
Why We Need to Question Ourselves More—and How We Can Judge Others Less
Read this on recommendation from a friend who knows the author. The friend got a lot of insight from it, but he felt like I might not learn many new lessons. He was right. Most of the deconstruction of certainty and the reinforcement of humility in this book can be cultivated in a high school literature class, which is what happened for me. Even in the middle of rural, conservative Indiana, people really are learning to stop and just consider other folks' motivations and reevaluating how certainly we can assess the intent of an interlocutor. I have a hard time believing that this book will transform too many people. The people who are open to the idea of climbing out of certainty (while remaining confident) are probably not the ones who need to read this.
Instead, the people who would profit a lot from this book probably wouldn't take a recommendation to read a book of this one's nature. Kind of a catch-22. You can tell that's who Redstone is writing to because one in three pages includes some kind of COA, some defense of an abstraction because there are people who will miss the abstract point and zero in on the irl example.
