As the world is increasingly polarised, it feels impossible to change the mind of someone with a conflicting view. But this book shows that you could be one conversation away from changing someone’s mind about something, maybe a lot of things. — amazon.co.uk
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Business studies have long emphasised the importance of ‘people management’ to business success. And EQ and so-called ‘soft skills’ are widely recognised as important attributes for managers and leaders.
But recent claims by evolutionary psychologists challenge the unspoken assumption that the human ability to reason is a superior capability of individuals, enabling them to think better on their own. If that were true, the argument goes, how strange it is flawed and keeps leading people astray through a long and growing list of inherent biases. Instead, they propose that reason is a social attribute that permits groups to arrive collectively at higher-quality decisions.
If this is true, then surely then the art and craft of thinking together is essential to effective performance whether led by a skilled external facilitator, or as a communally developed skill shared by a group, family, organization or community. The implications for management practice are extensive.
Insight and empathy spring from the clash of different perspectives. In a world where it’s easier than ever for people to share their opinions, we should be reaping the benefits of diverse views. Instead, we too often find ourselves mired in hostility or – worse – avoiding disagreement altogether. Ian Leslie argues that this is because most of us never learn how to air our differences in a way that leads to progress. – amamzon.co.uk
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How six books on cosmology, human nature, consciousness, stories and thermodynamics challenge the faith of a progressive Christian.
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‘Mercier and Sperber offer a surprising and powerful response to the new orthodoxy propounded by Kahneman and Tversky … arguing that the supposed flaws of hot, fast, automatic thinking are actually design features which work remarkably well’ Julian Baggini
Reason, we are told, is what makes us human, the source of our knowledge and wisdom. But, if reason is so useful, why didn’t it also evolve in other animals? If it is that reliable, why do we produce so much thoroughly reasoned nonsense?
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