Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress

73. Right-wing anti-intellectualism has been deplored by conservatives themselves in books like Charlie Sykes’s How the Right Lost Its Mind (2017) and Matt Lewis’s Too Dumb to Fail (2016).

74. Centrality of reason: Nagel 1997; Norman 2016.

75. Extraordinary popular delusions: McKay 1841/1995; see also K. Malik, “All the Fake News That Was Fit to Print,” New York Times, Dec. 4, 2016.

76. A. D. Holan, “All Politicians Lie. Some Lie More Than Others,” New York Times, Dec. 11, 2015.

77. In analyzing history’s deadliest conflicts, Matthew White comments, “I’m amazed at how often the immediate cause of a conflict is a mistake, unfounded suspicion, or rumor.” In addition to the first two listed here he includes the First World War, Sino-Japanese War, Seven Years’ War, Second French War of Religion, An Lushan Rebellion in China, Indonesian Purge, and Russia’s Time of Troubles; White 2011, p. 537.

78. Opinion of Judge Leon M. Bazile, Jan. 22, 1965, Encyclopedia Virginia, http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Opinion_of_Judge_Leon_M_Bazile_January_22_1965.

79. S. Sontag, “Some Thoughts on the Right Way (for Us) to Love the Cuban Revolution,” Ramparts, April 1969, pp. 6–19. Sontag went on to claim that the homosexuals “have long since been sent home,” but gays continued to be sent to forced labor camps in Cuba throughout the 1960s and 1970s. See “Concentration Camps in Cuba: The UMAP,” Totalitarian Images, Feb. 6, 2010, http://totalitarianimages.blogspot.com/2010/02/concentration-camps-in-cuba-umap.html, and J. Halatyn, “From Persecution to Acceptance? The History of LGBT Rights in Cuba,” Cutting Edge, Oct. 24, 2012, http://www.thecuttingedgenews.com/index.php?article=76818.

80. Affective tipping point: Redlawsk, Civettini, & Emmerson 2010.

81. Naked emperors and common knowledge: Pinker 2007a; Thomas et al. 2014; Thomas, DeScioli, & Pinker 2018.

82. For an excellent summary of common fallacies, see the Web site and poster “Thou shalt not commit logical fallacies,” https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/. Critical thinking curricula: Willingham 2007.

83. Debiasing: Bond 2009; Gigerenzer 1991; Gigerenzer & Hoffrage 1995; Lilienfeld, Ammirati, & Landfield 2009; Mellers et al. 2014; Morewedge et al. 2015.

84. The trouble with critical-thinking curricula: Willingham 2007.

85. Effective debiasing: Bond 2009; Gigerenzer 1991; Gigerenzer & Hoffrage 1995; Lilienfeld, Ammirati, & Landfield 2009; Mellers et al. 2014; Mercier & Sperber 2011; Morewedge et al. 2015; Tetlock & Gardner 2015; Willingham 2007.

86. Giving debiasing away: Lilienfeld, Ammirati, & Landfield 2009.

87. Anonymous, quoted in P. Voosen, “Striving for a Climate Change,” Chronicle Review of Higher Education, Nov. 3, 2014.

88. Improving argument: Kuhn 1991; Mercier & Sperber 2011, 2017; Sloman & Fernbach 2017.

89. Truth wins: Mercier & Sperber 2011.

90. Adversarial collaboration: Mellers, Hertwig, & Kahneman 2001.

91. The Illusion of Explanatory Depth: Rozenblit & Keil 2002. Using the illusion to debias: Sloman & Fernbach 2017.

92. Mercier & Sperber 2011, p. 72; Mercier & Sperber 2017.

93. More rational journalism: Silver 2015; A. D. Holan, “All Politicians Lie. Some Lie More Than Others,” New York Times, Dec. 11, 2015.

94. More rational intelligence-gathering: Tetlock & Gardner 2015; Tetlock, Mellers, & Scoblic 2017.

95. More rational medicine: Topol 2012.

96. More rational psychotherapy: T. Rousmaniere, “What Your Therapist Doesn’t Know,” The Atlantic, April 2017.

97. More rational crimefighting: Abt & Winship 2016; Latzer 2016.

98. More rational international development: Banerjee & Duflo 2011.

99. More rational altruism: MacAskill 2015.

100. More rational sports: Lewis 2016.

101. “What Exactly Is the ‘Rationality Community’?” LessWrong, http://lesswrong.com/lw/ov2/what_exactly_is_the_rationality_community/.

102. More rational governance: Behavioral Insights Team 2015; Haskins & Margolis 2014; Schuck 2015; Sunstein 2013; D. Leonhard, “The Quiet Movement to Make Government Fail Less Often,” New York Times, July 15, 2014.

103. Democracy versus rationality: Achens & Bartels 2016; Brennan 2016; Caplan 2007; Mueller 1999; Somin 2016.

104. Plato and democracy: Goldstein 2013.

105. Kahan, Wittlin, et al. 2011, p. 16.

106. HPV versus hep B: E. Klein, “How Politics Makes Us Stupid,” Vox, April 6, 2014.

107. Party over policy: Cohen 2003.

108. Evidence that same-side spokespeople can change minds: Nyhan 2013.

109. Kahan, Jenkins-Smith, et al. 2012.

110. Depoliticized Florida compact: Kahan 2015.

111. Chicago Way: Sean Connery’s Jim Malone in The Untouchables (1987). GRIT: Osgood 1962.

CHAPTER 22: SCIENCE

1. The example is from Murray 2003.

2. Carroll 2016, p. 426.