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“So... this is it then? The end of planet Earth?”
The old man sighs and said, “Looks like it doesn’t it?”
They made an odd couple. One elderly male, his face wrinkled and worn, his hair white and untidy, his clothes stained and creased.
Besides him, the young woman, aged in her mid twenties, her head shaved like a Buddhist monk, yet the dark circles about her eyes and frail body hidden In thick, oversized clothing, revealed her head was manifestation of some illness that was destroying her.
They sat upon the hill besides the old Greenwich Observatory. All was in darkness.
They had spotted each other earlier, when the sun had shone and people had come to Greenwich Park to enjoy the last day. Gaze at the grandeur of the old Royal Naval College. Walk their dog. Relish other’s company. Enjoy a perfect June afternoon, for one final time.
But the sun had started to set and in twos and three everyone had left. Except the girl and the old man. Awkwardly she had invited him to join her on her blanket, and awkwardly he had accepted and now both rested upon the deep green grass and gazed up at the night sky.
“So, what do we do now?”
Her voice trembles a little even as she tries to keep her tone light. It’s dark. Still warm but no lights were lit around the observatory or in the park at all. The only illumination came from London itself. The city blazed defiant still.
The old man ponders for a little and says, “I suppose we wait.”
“What for?”
He shrugs and says, “Boom.”
“You think there will be a boom?”
He smiles to himself, “Honestly? I hope so.”
“Why?”
“Means it’s over quick. I’d hate for it to be slow,” he says. He glances over at her. She was pretty. Still very pretty he felt. You could see whatever was ravaging her body had taken its toll but her eyes seemed to twinkle in the distant lights of the Docklands.
“I know what you mean,” she says, her eyes glazing over sadly, before she adds, “It’s been slow for me.”
“How long you been sick?”
“Nine years. I’ve fought. I’ve done that whole brave soldier routine,” she says and turns to look at him, a tight smile on her lips; “But this body of mine just really isn’t as tough as I needed it to be”
He sighs and looks away awkwardly, “I’m so sorry. That’s just awful.”
“No, that’s just genetics. Can’t do a damn thing about it.”
She continues to smile and he smiles back. Another awkward moment settles on them. But they want to talk. The intimacy of strangers. She glances down at her knees for a moment, her voice very quiet.
“What about you?”
“Renal failure. Well, that’s the excuse. The renal failure is simply a symptom. The cause is just being old.”
She nods and they say nothing. In the distance they hear a few cars drive by very quickly. But it’s just them in the park. Moments pass and he takes a breath.
“I’m actually glad it’s all happening now,” he grins, “I’ve not bothered with my treatment today. If the Earth isn’t destroyed this evening I’ll be in a terrible state in the morning.”
She finds herself laughing, almost in spite of herself. It’s a gentle laugh. The old man gazed at her for a moment.
“If you don’t mind me asking Miss... How long until...”
His nervousness allowed her know exactly what he was asking about. She takes a breath.
“Maybe a week. A month at most. Organ failure has kicked in. Nacrosis. My body is actually dying,” she shrugs.
She gazed up at the stars and shrugs, “At least that was the plan. Recent events have forced me to cancel that.”
“Damned inconvenient if you ask me,” he smirks and she smirks back at him.
A siren, a police car maybe, echoes off the buildings to their left, somewhere in Greenwich itself. They glance over but see nothing. The orange glow of street lights beyond the nearby trees. She inhaled deeply.
“I always liked it here. My favourite park.”
“Me too. It has deer you know?”
“I did. Never seen one. You?”
“A few times. It’s rare though.”
The siren fades and the odd couple sit on the hill on a warm summers evening. She bites her lip for a second and glances over at him.
“Were you bothered? When they asked?”
“About staying? No. I wasn’t. Although to be honest I didn’t have much choice.”
He raises his bushy white eyebrows and tries to force a smile; “But I didn’t mind too much. It all made sense I suppose. You?”
She nods, “I was a little upset. I mean, they asked nicely, but as you said, they worded it in a way that...”
“Made you realise that ‘no’ was unacceptable?”
She bites back a smile, “Something like that. And yeah, if I’m honest? It pissed me off for a bit. But... Like you said... it makes sense.”
They stare at each other for a second before they are distracted as, suddenly, the sky is filled with explosions. The couple look. The hill they sit on has a commanding view of Docklands, her gigantic skyscrapers, huge towers of light. To their left the gigantic Shard can be seen, towering over the south side of the river.
And beyond that, high above the skies of central London, they can seen the flashes of fireworks. So many fireworks.
She smiled broadly.
“That’s pretty.”
“Agreed. Very.”
As they watch fireworks explode along the Thames. Someone went to a lot of time and effort to do this. Huge firework barges along the river now erupted into light as all over the London sky the last firework display in Earth’s history plays out.
For a few minutes they sit and watch in silence. Him, not quite cross legged, her, with her face resting on her knees.
“I should have thought of that. Fireworks on Earth’s last day,” she says wistfully.
“Smart a well,” he says, nodding.
“Smart?”
“Shows we are still down here. In case they are looking?”
“Oh yes. I see. Your right that’s very smart.”
The fireworks leave a gentle fog of smoke in the air. Along the river they fade out but the ones in the centre of the city continue, endless explosions. A gesture of defiance.
Around them however, the park is silent and dark and warm. She shivers briefly and rests her cheek on her knee, gazing at him. The old man notices and smiles, “What?”
“Does the idea of dying bother you?”
“No. I’m old.”
“Really?”
He sighs and leans back onto his hands, his eyes focusing on the few stars above them.
“Maybe a little. To be honest? Death bothers everyone I suppose. Troubles our thoughts. You do end up thinking about it a lot more as you get older. Get a bit more use to the idea.”
He blinks and glanced over at her. “What about you?”
“It’s weird. It scared me when I was younger. Especially after my first relapse. Before then I thought I’d overcome this. You know- mind over matter? But when I was told it was back? I became afraid. Really afraid.”
The distant fireworks cascade in oranges and greens and reds, and her voice is very quiet.
“And then a few years later? I felt I found peace you know? Got all reconciled to it. Nothing to be afraid off I convinced myself. But that was a few years ago. Now? Here and now? I don’t know how I feel. It’s weird.”
He nods, but is unsure how to respond. Inhaling deeply and savouring the scent of the grass he gazes down the hill at the white shapes of distant grand buildings.
“I suppose,” he says after a few seconds, “the good news is, that when I’m dead? I won’t worry about being dead. Won’t worry about anything really.”
She frowns and her nose wrinkles. “That’s really hard for me to grasp. Like not worrying about stuff after I go. Like I can’t get my head around it.”
“Well then, let me ask you something. What did you think, before you were born, about events in the 1920’s?”
She blinks and raises her head. “I... I didn’t think anything. I wasn’t around in the 1920’s.”
“Well, that’s how it’s going to be tomorrow. We won’t be around to think about events the day after Earth is destroyed and it will bother us the same way not being around in the 1600’s bothered us. Not even a little bit. Make sense?”
Her face, he can tell, seems quite serious for a moment, and she sighs.
“I suppose. Do... do you believe in... you know? An after life”
“I want to. I’d hate to think the universe went to all this trouble to make me and then NOT have something afterwards.”
She smiles, gently, at that.
“I do. I really do. Not like heaven or stuff, but I just believe that consciousness is really complicated and we don’t understand it and that it exists. In another form. Somewhere. After we go.”
He nods in response to her and gazes up at the stars again. “That sounds nice,” he says, “I like that. Everyone and everything who has ever lived has their consciousness carry on. So beyond our bodies we can all meet up and have a chat.”
She smiles back at him, “I wonder what it would be like?”
“Probably very crowded...”
She laughs. It’s a lovely sound. Like something that had sat within her suddenly erupting. She laughs honestly and he finds himself smiling alongside her.
Her laughter, however, lasts only a few seconds and then catches. Her eyes gaze upwards into the sky and go wide. The old man follows her gaze and sees it also.
There, high above London, sits the Moon, her cold white face gazing down at them all from her usual place in the sky; but across the south west facet of its familiar visage they both can see a shadow.
Its faintly triangular shaped. Something vast and leviathan flying between Earth and its moon. Something menacing. Something alien.
As they watch, spellbound, he hears the fireworks begin to trail off, leaving a cloud of smoke that hangs in the neon lit air over London.
“Is that them?”
“Afraid so,” he replies.
In the silence they can hear, far far away, a noise from where the fireworks came from. They can’t be too sure but it sounds like the distant roar of people screaming.
“It looks intimidating,” she says and he nods.
“I think it’s meant to.”
As they watch the shadow crawls over the face of the Moon; the shadow of some vast thing that floats between the Earth and her companion. And as they watch the tip of this dark triangle begins to emit a bright, white, light.
“What’s that?”
“I think they are powering up their main weapon.”
“Oh. Now?”
“Looks like.”
“Oh,” she says as if taken-aback. And no sooner has she said it then the triangle acts. From the dark shadow a solid beam of white light races through the night sky. It flies directly over them, beyond the horizon, aiming towards somewhere far far away.
They, along with everyone else on Earth at the moment, just gaze at it opened mouthed.
“Wow,” she says.
“Yeah,” comes his reply.
The distant sound of shouting ends. The city is remarkably quiet. She blinks.
“Now what happens?”
The old man takes a breath and steals his eyes away from the beam of white light that dissects the sky above him.
“Well that beam they are shooting? According to what I read, that’s going to fly towards the sun and when it hits it? Boom.”
She nods and looks at him. “How long until it hits then?”
Even though he didn’t need to he glances down at his old watch. “Well it’s moving at the speed of light, so 8 minutes.”
She frowns at that and asks, “So, 8 minutes until boom?”
“No. Think about it. Going to take 8 minutes to get there. Take a while for the sun to react and go boom. And then when it does? 8 minutes for the boom to reach us. So I’d say twenty minutes. Give or take.”
“The last twenty minutes of Earth?”
“Yes. Looks like,” he says sadly. Before she can respond they both hear someone scream. A woman. She’s nearby. In the streets next to the park. Its a scream of pure terror. A scream of imminent morality. It lasts a few seconds. And then becomes still.
The girl stares over at where it came from, hidden, behind the trees.
“I wish they didn’t scream. It doesn’t help.”
“People become afraid. They can’t help it.”
Suddenly their eyes are drawn to something new. Not the terrifying light that crosses the sky, nor the ominous shadow of the alien craft that fires it.
Back across central London, where the fog of thousands of fireworks slowly dissipates in a windless summer night, someone has activated a laser projector.
Against the smoke appears words illuminated in intense red lettering: 90 feet high script begins taking shape above London, aiming upwards, sending a message out to the stars...
FUCK OFF AND DIE YOU UTTER WANKERS
The odd couple on Greenwich hill respond like all who saw those words responded and burst out laughing. Genuine laughter, from that heart.
“Oh that’s brilliant,” the girl says, “Well done.”
He grins back at her, “Humans. Can’t help ourselves can we?”
They enjoy the message but then, suddenly, the beam of white light that laid across the sky, ceases. The night sky is returned to darkness.
“Its stopped!”
At her words, the old man glances down at his watch. “Two minutes. So the first part of the beam will hit the sun in about six minutes time. Assume the beam takes two minutes to churn stuff up. It’s coming I suppose.”
Over the skies of London a new message appears in bright red lettering.
WE WILL NEVER SURRENDER!
The old man glances at it and under his breath says “Here here...” quietly.
“It’s leaving,” she says pointing at the shadow upon the face of the Moon. He nods.
“Yes. Probably looking to get far, far away. When the sun blows she’s going to make a hell of a mess.”
The girl turns to him.
“That means... it worked? The plan?”
The old man blinks, like someone remembering something and he smiles.
“Yes. Yes you’re right. They fell for it. It worked.”
“Good,” she says, her voice resolute, “That makes me happy.”
“Me too. Good to know it was worth it eh? All of this.”
She nods and looks at him, her eyes showing resolve.
“Yes,” says the girl, “It makes me happy. You know I was thinking the other day; I’ve spent so much time needing the help of others. Doctors, nurses, carers. The human race has spent a fortune on me to keep me alive this long.”
She gazes at her frail hand for a moment.
“I feel good I get to do something back for the human race.”
“That’s a lovely way to see it,” he nods, “And I have to agree. I mean, I’ve had a good life. But I suppose I’ve benefitted. From electricity. And medicine. And society. I liked society. I mean it wasn’t perfect. But it allowed me live for a long time. It was nice.”
“Yes. Society was nice. I hope we make a better one.”
“Me too,”
In the firework smog above London, new words appear...
GO ON THEN! FUCK THE FUCK OFF!
He smiles at the very, VERY British statements of resentment.
“That’s them gone,” he says, watching the last of the shadow leave the surface of the Moon, “Flying away. Idiots.”
She nods, “They are going to be so mad when they discover what we did to them.”
“Well, here’s hoping they never find out eh?”
She stares at the darkness of space besides the Moon for a moment before asking, “Who started it?”
“Who started what?”
“The war?”
“Oh, it was Them. They are miles ahead of us technologically wise. I mean they can destroy suns with a single beam. We can’t even come close. We’d never have picked a fight with them.”
“True. What did they want?”
He sighs and shrugs.
“The usual. The human race to surrender to them. Become slaves. Or food. I think both.”
“And that is what caused their ultimatum?”
“Think so. And you know our reaction.”
She looks over at the laser created letters above the ancient city of London and smiles sadly.
“Yeah,” she says and is still for a moment.
“How long now?”
He glances down at his watch.
“About 13 minutes or so.”
“Soon then?”
“Yes. But it does seem to be slowing. Time that is.”
“I suppose.”
She sounds sad and he wishes to distract her. A sudden thought comes to him. “Very ironic us worrying about time here of all places don’t you think?”
“What do you mean?”
“The Observatory,” he indicates the large brick building about 50 feet from them on the top of the hill.
“See, that was where we calculated all the time zones from. The GMT line. Greenwich Mean Time. It actually runs right through the middle of the building. This is the centre of time on Earth. Literally go that way...”
He points down river towards the sea, “And you have to put your clocks forward, and if you go that way...”
He gestures down towards the town itself, hidden behind the trees, “And you have to put your clocks back. This is the centre of time.”
She nods slowly, “I never knew that.”
“This has been the place where the whole world has kept time. That was why I came here to be honest. That building. What it represented. Time.”
He is silent for a moment. She stares at this old man, his disheveled clothes, but sees a spark of intelligence in his face. She wonders about his life. His life before.
For his part the old man sighs and continues, “I don’t know. I suppose we all retained some mad dream that somehow we’d all escape this. Somehow find a way out. Mine? It involved being here. Maybe here where we fixed time we could do something like freeze time, hold the last perfect day so it could last forever.”
He catches himself and winces.
“Sorry, must sound silly.”
“That’s lovely,” she says and then takes a breath. And then turns to him again.
“How long? Tsk! Sorry. I shouldn’t keep asking...”
“It’s fine. It’s not like we can ignore the circumstances,” replies. He glances down at his watch.
“About ten minutes,” he says quietly. The girl is staring at the night sky.
“Where are they do you think?”
“The enemy? Probably running as fast as he can away from here.”
“No. Us. The rest of us?”
“Oh. Well, given it’s been a week or so, I’d say they are nearly there by now. They said Eden was three and a half thousand light years away. So I think that means it will take them nine days on the arks. Give or take.”
He shrugs at her and continues, “Obviously I wasn’t paying too much attention to the evacuation procedures.”
This makes her smiles again.
“Me neither,” she says quietly, “Didn’t see the point.”
She takes a deep breath and straightened out her back. She turns to him.
“I’m pleased it worked.”
“Me too,” he nods back and looks up at the darkness of the cosmos, “Fuck you assholes, we fooled you. We’ve won.”
“When will they know?”
“Who?”
“Us,” she says, “The rest of us. When will they know Earth was destroyed?”
His eyes never leave the stars and his frail voice is distant and quiet.
“I suppose one night humanity will look up into the night sky above Eden and they will see a bright flash far distant as our sun blows up. In three and a half thousand years.”
“And the enemy doesn’t know about Eden?” Her voice is almost pleading, hoping for this validation. He nods.
“No. It’s why nothing was broadcast. Why we turned off all radio and TV communications. We couldn’t even allow an accidental slip. We printed everything. They don’t know about Eden.”
She shivers quietly, and blinks. Wondering what the cause was. She can see nothing but the park in darkness and the old man staring up into space.
“We outsmarted them,” she says and he blinks and turns to her.
“Yes. We did. Final proof that there is nothing we humans can’t do if we out our minds to it. An all powerful alien species threatens to destroy our world? And we? Manage to sneak off nearly every human being right under their noses and settle on another world. Quite brilliant.”
He seems happy and for reasons she didn’t quite understand, his happiness gave her joy. She leaned forward and asks, “Did you see the descriptions of Eden? I didn’t really feel like paying much attention to it?”
“Oh yes,” he says getting excited, “Exoplanet almost identical to Earth. Slightly larger. Gravity a tad more but also a tad warmer. And two moons which means it’s tides are much more stable. Sounds ideal. And we know we can live there. Had people on it for thirty years before the crisis.”
She sighs gently, “Eden. The Bible says we came from the Garden of Eden.”
“We came from Eden and we go back to Eden. Nice symmetry.”
He sighs and glances down at his watch. He sees her questioning look and says flatly, “Not long now. About seven minutes.”
She nods and looks sad. Hit with a moments insecurity he asks, “Do you... do you need to be anywhere?”
“I’ve got nowhere else to go. Everyone I know has...”
“Me too,” he says. He looks around and remembering turns to her, “You know what I did yesterday? Spent a day walking around a primary school. It was filled with the remains of what had just been. Books and pens and art on the walls. In one classroom the children had drawn a big picture of Earth and above it the words ‘Goodbye Earth- thank you. We won’t forget you’. It was very sweet.”
She smiles.
“I’m pleased they took the children. All the children.”
“Me also. And hey, they took 9 billion and change out of 10 billion humans. That’s bloody remarkable when you think about. All creeds, all colours, rich and poor. Didn’t care about religion or caste. They took everyone.”
“Except us,” she says quietly.
“Except the very old,” he replies.
“And the very sick.”
Her voice is small and vulnerable and he glances over, a look of concern upon his face. She sees it and holds her head up.
“It’s alright. It made sense. A lot of sense. I mean they HAD to leave some right?”
“Indeed. If we ALL went, when the enemy showed up they would have known, especially as we had stopped using tv and radio for the last month. They had to look down and see humans still on the planet. Be convinced we were still here. That way they would do what they threatened to do and move on. Not aware most of us had escaped.”
“And it’s worked,” the girl beams.
“It has worked. Well done humanity,” he smiles back.
“Fuck you aliens!” She looks up at the night sky, her face defiant and strong. Her defiance infects him, and he nods.
“Indeed. Fuck them.”
The trees come alive, as hundreds of birds suddenly start flying. No birdsong. But hundred and hundreds of avian creatures all come to life. Briefly they are distracted by their sudden movement.
“That’s odd,” she says but then just gasps as all the lights in the city go out. A few emergency lights in tower blocks automatically come to life, but it was as if someone had turned off all the power to everywhere with the flick of a single switch.
Utter darkness envelops them both. They sit for a few seconds, their eyes adjusting to the complete darkness (where the Moon is the only illumination), but all they can hear are the flap of thousands of birds wings in the trees and air around them.
“Do you think?”
Her voice is raised slightly to be heard over the noise of the animals.
“I don’t know,” he replies.
“Oh. The sky?”
He hears her and looks up. The sky has changed. Where there was at most twenty or thirty stars that could be seen above, now there were millions of them. It was if the entire sky had come alive with a myriad of stars of every size and hue.
“Yes. Light pollution. We can see the sky without the orange glow.”
“It’s so pretty,” she says dreamily, gazing up at the sky as if it was new to her.
“Yes. Perfect. Normally you have to go deep in the countryside to get that.”
The girl gazes upwards and narrows her eyes.
“Where is Eden? Which one of these stars is Eden?”
The old man has no idea, but senses that the actual answer didn’t matter right now.
“That one,” he says pointing at a nice looking twinkling star.
“Really?”
“Yes. Its that one.”
She smiles broadly and whispers up at the star, “We did it humanity. We fooled them.”
And as quickly as it starts the beating of wings suddenly ends. A sudden, terrifying silence falls upon the world.
“I’m getting scared,” she whispers.
“Oh don’t my dear. Don’t be scared. Its just something that was going to happen fairly soon to us all just happening a little bit sooner eh?”
She turns to him, “Can you hold my hand?”
“I’d be honoured,” he says and takes hers in his. It feels thin and fragile; his feel calloused and wrinkled. It doesn’t matter. As much as they dare, without words, they squeeze each other’s hand.
“I’m pleased to have met you,” she says, quietly.
“So am I. I’m glad I’m not alone.”
“Me too. I’m sorry. I never asked your name,” says the girl. The old man smiles.
“William. My friends call me Billy.”
“I’m Abigail.”
“I’m really pleased to have met you Abigail.”
“I’m really pleased to have met you too Billy.”
The darkness suddenly diminishes. Nearby a herd of deer race out of some trees and spring across the grass before them. Twenty, thirty, more. Majestic even in their panic. Racing from somewhere to anywhere.
The darkness lightens. As if, far away, the luminosity the sun has just been turned way up. They can see the red deer race down towards the river and watch them sadly...
“I feel sorry for it,” she says.
“What?”
“The Earth. And the Sun. They didn’t ask for this,” comes her voice.
“No, I suppose they didn’t.”
“Poor old Earth.”
Billy pats the grass besides him...
“Yes indeed. She was a good planet. Thank you Earth. For everything.”
Abigail smiles at that and Billy is suddenly aware he can see her clearly. It’s getting quite light...
A ROAR. The air is rent by a roar unlike any heard upon this world. Superheated air catches fire high above them, igniting the atmosphere far above, as the opening salvo of the death of the sun hits the other side of the planet.
The odd couple are illuminated as if it were day light, but it is a harsh white daylight, unforgiving and uncaring.
It’s over for the other side at least thinks Billy.
But the roar increases, and he notices it is getting much hotter.
“Billy. I’m scared.”
“Don’t be Abigail. I’m here.”
Instinctively the old man brings her close, into a hug and she allows it. She can smell the stale scent of old dried sweat on unwashed clothing and tobacco and grime but for some reason she cannot explain it fills her with comfort. Relief. To be held by another human.
He holds her close and desperately seeks to talk about something, anything...
“Did... did you have any family?”
His voice is loud now. The roar above is deafening.
“My parents. My brother. We said goodbye last week. They didn’t want to go. I insisted. You?”
“I have a daughter. I assume she has gone. Haven’t spoken to her in years. She’s safe. Like the rest of them. They are all safe Abigail.”
“All safe,” she says and smiles and tears form, hard tears. The light gets brighter and the temperature higher. Sweat forms on her neck.
The roar continues and he has to shout.
“Jolly well taking it’s time eh?”
Abigail finds this the funniest joke she has ever heard in all her life and laughs through her tears.
“Yes. I wish to complain in the strongest terms about the slow service at the end of the world...”
And Billy finds it the funniest joke he has ever heard in all his life.
He glances up and sees a white burning sky, flames only a few hundred feet above them. Coming lower. He feels absolute terror and curls himself up around the young woman, protecting her, burying his face into her neck while she curls up inside his arms.
The ground beneath them starts to shake.
“Billy?”
“Its alright Abigail. I’m here. Be over soon.”
The hill begins to shake far more violently, vibrating back and forth and forces beyond any in the planets history smash into it. They cling to each other tighter in a final embrace.
Here.
At the end of all things.
Her thoughts race with lightning speed, a history of broken memories of a life spent in hospitals and sick beds and of snatched glimpses of health. She begins to cry properly. Shuddering tears, all defences broken, all pretences gone. She sobs and curls into a little ball, and says ‘Daddy..’
And around her the old man begins to hum a tune he knew from his own childhood, cradling her and rocking her, he wants desperately to tell her it will all be alright, wants desperately to tell this young girl that he can make it better...
And with this Billy’s mind finds itself at some kind of mental singularity; a point of no return. And he’s sees all his life, his two wives, his daughter laughing as a child, his mistakes, his regrets... all his life flashes before his minds eye.
And yet to his surprise he sees something else.
He sees before him an image of giant craft, its vast engines cooling, from huge gates in its side, disgorging people, so many people...sees their faces filled with hope and fears... he sees them smile at the sounds of children laughing
He sees them build and stumble; sees them punishing criminals, making laws, sees they making countries. He seems them making mistakes, so many mistakes, and he sees their wars and their horrors; and they do inflict wars and horrors upon each other.
But in that mental singularity he sees more. Children growing, living, loving, having children of their own. He sees ten thousand thousand generations yet to be born, building in a new place. On a new planet. Safe and wonderful and beautiful and perfect and they gaze up in the night sky of an alien word at a star that flares briefly...
And like a singularity this last thought is all; forever trapped between the now and the was; forever would Billy feel that sense of pride and of joy and of love...
And this young woman’s words and his own combine and in that endless moment of time he thinks
We did it humanity; we fooled them; remember us...
And that was all he knew.
The nova was spectacular, the suns core tearing itself apart and it deaths throes obliterating Mercury and Venus and Earth and Mars; it’s vast forces slammed into Jupiter and Saturn. The Giant Planets died also.
The sun flared briefly in its death and then exploded. And all trace of the planet Earth and of all the life upon it was gone forever.
And across the endless cosmos a single thought of a single mind repeated as it held to the last sliver of its time, filled with hope and love and a defiance eternal.
Remember us...
It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known
-Charles Dickens.

A comprehensive list of books that will help you think clearly

A comprehensive list of books that might be of interest to people that want to read something that would improve their thinking or some friends?
I have not read many of these, thus I can not personally vouch for all of them or recommend one over the other.
I'm not affiliated with Goodreads, but linked to them since I wanted to include the ratings and they have links to several different sources including libraries if you want to borrow or acquire any one of these, and often some quality reviews.
The Believing Brain: From Ghosts and Gods to Politics and Conspiracies How We Construct Beliefs and Reinforce Them as Truths
by Michael Shermer 3.93 · Rating details · 6,985 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9754534-the-believing-brain
The Believing Brain is bestselling author Michael Shermer's comprehensive and provocative theory on how beliefs are born, formed, reinforced, challenged, changed, and extinguished.
In this work synthesizing thirty years of research, psychologist, historian of science, and the world's best-known skeptic Michael Shermer upends the traditional thinking about how humans form beliefs about the world. Simply put, beliefs come first and explanations for beliefs follow. The brain, Shermer argues, is a belief engine. From sensory data flowing in through the senses, the brain naturally begins to look for and find patterns, and then infuses those patterns with meaning. Our brains connect the dots of our world into meaningful patterns that explain why things happen, and these patterns become beliefs. Once beliefs are formed the brain begins to look for and find confirmatory evidence in support of those beliefs, which accelerates the process of reinforcing them, and round and round the process goes in a positive-feedback loop of belief confirmation. Shermer outlines the numerous cognitive tools our brains engage to reinforce our beliefs as truths.
Interlaced with his theory of belief, Shermer provides countless real-world examples of how this process operates, from politics, economics, and religion to conspiracy theories, the supernatural, and the paranormal. Ultimately, he demonstrates why science is the best tool ever devised to determine whether or not a belief matches reality.
Critical Thinking: Tools for Taking Charge of Your Professional and Personal Life
by Richard Paul, Linda Elder
3.93 · Rating details · 1,082 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17296839-critical-thinking
Critical Thinking is about becoming a better thinker in every aspect of your life: in your career, and as a consumer, citizen, friend, parent, and lover.
Discover the core skills of effective thinking; then analyze your own thought processes, identify weaknesses, and overcome them. Learn how to translate more effective thinking into better decisions, less frustration, more wealth Ñ and above all, greater confidence to pursue and achieve your most important goals in life.
The Thinker's Guide to Analytic Thinking by Linda Elder,Richard Paul
3.89 · Rating details · 163 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/19227921-the-thinker-s-guide-to-analytic-thinking
This guide focuses on the intellectual skills that enable one to analyze anything one might think about - questions, problems, disciplines, subjects, etc. It provides the common denominator between all forms of analysis.
It is based on the assumption that all reasoning can be taken apart and analyzed for quality.
This guide introduces the elements of reasoning as implicit in all reasoning. It begins with this idea - that whenever we think, we think for a purpose, within a point of view, based on assumptions, leading to implications and consequences. We use data, facts and experiences (information), to make inferences and judgments,based on concepts and theories to answer a question or solve a problem. Thus the elements of thought are: purpose, questions, information, inferences, assumptions, concepts, implications and point of view. In this guide, authors Linda Elder and Richard Paul explain, exemplify and contextualize these elements or structures of thought, showing the importance of analyzing reasoning in every part of human life. This guide can be used as a supplement to any text or course at the college level; and it may be used for improving thinking in personal and professional life.
The Thinker's Guide to Intellectual Standards by Linda Elder, Richard Paul
4.19 · Rating details · 16 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/19017637-the-thinker-s-guide-to-intellectual-standards
Humans routinely assess thinking – their own thinking, and that of others, and yet they don’t necessarily use standards for thought that are reasonable, rational, sound.
To think well, people need to routinely meet intellectual standards, standards of clarity, precision, accuracy, relevance, depth, logic, fairness, significance, and so forth.
In this guide authors Elder and Paul offer a brief analysis of some of the most important intellectual standards in the English language. They look at the opposites of these standards. They argue for their contextualization within subjects and disciplines. And, they call attention to the forces that undermine their skilled use in thinking well. At present intellectual standards tend to be either taught implicitly, or ignored in instruction. Yet because they are essential to high quality reasoning in every part of human life, they should be explicitly taught and explicitly understood.
The Truth Seeker’s Handbook: A Science-Based Guide by Gleb Tsipursky (Goodreads Author) 4.24 · Rating details · 63 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36800752-the-truth-seeker-s-handbook
How do you know whether something is true? How do you convince others to believe the facts?
Research shows that the human mind is prone to making thinking errors - predictable mistakes that cause us to believe comfortable lies over inconvenient truths. These errors leave us vulnerable to making decisions based on false beliefs, leading to disastrous consequences for our personal lives, relationships, careers, civic and political engagement, and for our society as a whole.
Fortunately, cognitive and behavioral scientists have uncovered many useful strategies for overcoming our mental flaws.
This book presents a variety of research-based tools for ensuring that our beliefs are aligned with reality.
With examples from daily life and an engaging style, the book will provide you with the skills to avoid thinking errors and help others to do so, preventing disasters and facilitating success for yourself, those you care about, and our society.
On Being Certain: Believing You Are Right Even When You're Not
by Robert A. Burton 3.90 · Rating details · 2,165 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2740964-on-being-certain
You recognize when you know something for certain, right? You "know" the sky is blue, or that the traffic light had turned green, or where you were on the morning of September 11, 2001--you know these things, well, because you just do. In On Being Certain, neurologist Robert Burton challenges the notions of how we think about what we know.
He shows that the feeling of certainty we have when we "know" something comes from sources beyond our control and knowledge.
In fact, certainty is a mental sensation, rather than evidence of fact.
Because this "feeling of knowing" seems like confirmation of knowledge, we tend to think of it as a product of reason.
But an increasing body of evidence suggests that feelings such as certainty stem from primitive areas of the brain, and are independent of active, conscious reflection and reasoning. The feeling of knowing happens to us; we cannot make it happen. Bringing together cutting edge neuroscience, experimental data, and fascinating anecdotes, Robert Burton explores the inconsistent and sometimes paradoxical relationship between our thoughts and what we actually know.
Provocative and groundbreaking, On Being Certain, will challenge what you know (or think you know) about the mind, knowledge, and reason.
The Invisible Gorilla: And Other Ways Our Intuitions Deceive Us
by Christopher Chabris,Daniel Simons 3.91 · Rating details · 13,537 ratings · 704 reviews
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7783191-the-invisible-gorilla
Reading this book will make you less sure of yourself—and that’s a good thing. In The Invisible Gorilla, Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons, creators of one of psychology’s most famous experiments, use remarkable stories and counterintuitive scientific findings to demonstrate an important truth: Our minds don’t work the way we think they do. We think we see ourselves and the world as they really are, but we’re actually missing a whole lot.
Again and again, we think we experience and understand the world as it is, but our thoughts are beset by everyday illusions. We write traffic laws and build criminal cases on the assumption that people will notice when something unusual happens right in front of them. We’re sure we know where we were on 9/11, falsely believing that vivid memories are seared into our minds with perfect fidelity. And as a society, we spend billions on devices to train our brains because we’re continually tempted by the lure of quick fixes and effortless self-improvement.
The Invisible Gorilla reveals the myriad ways that our intuitions can deceive us, but it’s much more than a catalog of human failings. Chabris and Simons explain why we succumb to these everyday illusions and what we can do to inoculate ourselves against their effects. Ultimately, the book provides a kind of x-ray vision into our own minds, making it possible to pierce the veil of illusions that clouds our thoughts and to think clearly for perhaps the first time.
Asking the Right Questions: A Guide to Critical Thinking
by M. Neil Browne, Stuart M. Keeley
3.94 · Rating details · 1,290 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/394398.Asking_the_Right_Questions
The habits and attitudes associated with critical thinking are transferable to consumer, medical, legal, and general ethical choices. When our surgeon says surgery is needed, it can be life sustaining to seek answers to the critical questions encouraged in Asking the Right Questions This popular book helps bridge the gap between simply memorizing or blindly accepting information, and the greater challenge of critical analysing the things we are told and read. It gives strategies for responding to alternative points of view and will help readers develop a solid foundation for making personal choices about what to accept and what to reject.
On Truth by Simon Blackburn 3.60 · Rating details · 62 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36722220-on-truth
Truth is not just a recent topic of contention. Arguments about it have gone on for centuries. Why is the truth important? Who decides what the truth is? Is there such a thing as objective, eternal truth, or is truth simply a matter of perspective, of linguistic or cultural vantage point?
In this concise book Simon Blackburn provides an accessible explanation of what truth is and how we might think about it.
The first half of the book details several main approaches to how we should think about, and decide, what is true.
These are philosophical theories of truth such as the correspondence theory, the coherence theory, deflationism, and others.
He then examines how those approaches relate to truth in several contentious domains: art, ethics, reasoning, religion, and the interpretation of texts.
Blackburn's overall message is that truth is often best thought of not as a product or an end point that is 'finally' achieved, but--as the American pragmatist thinkers thought of it--as an ongoing process of inquiry. The result is an accessible and tour through some of the deepest and thorniest questions philosophy has ever tackled
Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
4.16 · Rating details · 317,352 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11468377-thinking-fast-and-slow?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=ZNhf1bAIxd&rank=1
In the highly anticipated Thinking, Fast and Slow, Kahneman takes us on a groundbreaking tour of the mind and explains the two systems that drive the way we think. System 1 is fast, intuitive, and emotional; System 2 is slower, more deliberative, and more logical. Kahneman exposes the extraordinary capabilities—and also the faults and biases—of fast thinking, and reveals the pervasive influence of intuitive impressions on our thoughts and behavior. The impact of loss aversion and overconfidence on corporate strategies, the difficulties of predicting what will make us happy in the future, the challenges of properly framing risks at work and at home, the profound effect of cognitive biases on everything from playing the stock market to planning the next vacation—each of these can be understood only by knowing how the two systems work together to shape our judgments and decisions.
Engaging the reader in a lively conversation about how we think, Kahneman reveals where we can and cannot trust our intuitions and how we can tap into the benefits of slow thinking.
He offers practical and enlightening insights into how choices are made in both our business and our personal lives—and how we can use different techniques to guard against the mental glitches that often get us into trouble. Thinking, Fast and Slow will transform the way you think about thinking.
Before You Know It: The Unconscious Reasons We Do What We Do by John A. Bargh (Goodreads Author)
3.97 · Rating details · 788 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35011639-before-you-know-it
Dr. John Bargh, the world’s leading expert on the unconscious mind, presents a “brilliant and convincing book” (Malcolm Gladwell) cited as an outstanding read of 2017 by Business Insider and The Financial Times—giving us an entirely new understanding of the hidden mental processes that secretly govern every aspect of our behavior.
For more than three decades, Dr. John Bargh has conducted revolutionary research into the unconscious mind, research featured in bestsellers like Blink and Thinking Fast and Slow. Now, in what Dr. John Gottman said was “the most important and exciting book in psychology that has been written in the past twenty years,” Dr. Bargh takes us on an entertaining and enlightening tour of the forces that affect everyday behavior while transforming our understanding of ourselves in profound ways.
Dr. Bargh takes us into his labs at New York University and Yale—where he and his colleagues have discovered how the unconscious guides our behavior, goals, and motivations in areas like race relations, parenting, business, consumer behavior, and addiction.
With infectious enthusiasm he reveals what science now knows about the pervasive influence of the unconscious mind in who we choose to date or vote for, what we buy, where we live, how we perform on tests and in job interviews, and much more.
Because the unconscious works in ways we are completely unaware of, Before You Know It is full of surprising and entertaining revelations as well as useful tricks to help you remember items on your to-do list, to shop smarter, and to sleep better.
Before You Know It is “a fascinating compendium of landmark social-psychology research” (Publishers Weekly) and an introduction to a fabulous world that exists below the surface of your awareness and yet is the key to knowing yourself and unlocking new ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving.
Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38315.Fooled_by_Randomness
by Nassim Nicholas Taleb 4.07 · Rating details · 49,010 ratings
Fooled by Randomness is a standalone book in Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s landmark Incerto series, an investigation of opacity, luck, uncertainty, probability, human error, risk, and decision-making in a world we don’t understand.
Philosophy books
Epistemology by Richard Feldman 3.84 · Rating details · 182 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/387295.Epistemology
Sophisticated yet accessible and easy to read, this introduction to contemporary philosophical questions about knowledge and rationality goes beyond the usual bland survey of the major current views to show that there is argument involved. Throughout, the author provides a fair and balanced blending of the standard positions on epistemology with his own carefully reasoned positions or stances into the analysis of each concept. KEY TOPICS: Epistemological Questions. The Traditional Analysis of Knowledge. Modifying the Traditional Analysis of Knowledge. Evidentialist Theories of Justification. Non-evidentialist Theories of Knowledge and Justification. Skepticism. Epistemology and Science. Relativism.
Problems of Knowledge: A Critical Introduction to Epistemology by Michael J. Williams
3.79 · Rating details · 86 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/477904.Problems_of_Knowledge
"What is epistemology or 'the theory of knowledge'? Why does it matter? What makes theorizing about knowledge 'philosophical'? And why do some philosophers argue that epistemology - perhaps even philosophy itself - is dead?" "
In this introduction, Michael Williams answers these questions, showing how epistemological theorizing is sensitive to a range of questions about the nature, limits, methods, and value of knowing.
He pays special attention to the challenge of philosophical scepticism: does our 'knowledge' rest on brute assumptions? Does the rational outlook undermine itself?"
Williams explains and criticizes all the main contemporary philosophical perspectives on human knowledge, such as foundationalism, the coherence theory, and 'naturalistic' theories. As an alternative to all of them, he defends his distinctive contextualist approach.
As well as providing an accessible introduction for any reader approaching the subject for the first time, this book incorporates Williams's own ideas which will be of interest to all philosophers concerned with the theory of knowledge.
Philosophy: The Basics
by Nigel Warburton 3.84 · Rating details · 1,928 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/31854.Philosophy
Now in its fourth edition, Nigel Warburton's best-selling book gently eases the reader into the world of philosophy. Each chapter considers a key area of philosophy, explaining and exploring the basic ideas and themes.
What is philosophy? Can you prove God exists? Is there an afterlife? How do we know right from wrong? Should you ever break the law? Is the world really the way you think it is? How should we define Freedom of Speech? Do you know how science works? Is your mind different from your body? Can you define art? For the fourth edition, Warburton has added new sections to several chapters, revised others and brought the further reading sections up to date. If you've ever asked what is philosophy, or whether the world is really the way you think it is, then this is the book for you.
The Oxford Handbook of Thinking and Reasoning
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/14829260-the-oxford-handbook-of-thinking-and-reasoning
by Keith J. Holyoak (Editor), Robert G. Morrison (Editor)
4.08 · Rating details · 12 ratings
Thinking and reasoning, long the academic province of philosophy, have over the past century emerged as core topics of empirical investigation and theoretical analysis in the modern fields of cognitive psychology, cognitive science, and cognitive neuroscience. Formerly seen as too complicated and amorphous to be included in early textbooks on the science of cognition, the study of thinking and reasoning has since taken off, brancing off in a distinct direction from the field from which it originated.
The Oxford Handbook of Thinking and Reasoning is a comprehensive and authoritative handbook covering all the core topics of the field of thinking and reasoning.
Written by the foremost experts from cognitive psychology, cognitive science, and cognitive neuroscience, individual chapters summarize basic concepts and findings for a major topic, sketch its history, and give a sense of the directions in which research is currently heading.
Chapters include introductions to foundational issues and methods of study in the field, as well as treatment of specific types of thinking and reasoning and their application in a broad range of fields including business, education, law, medicine, music, and science.
The volume will be of interest to scholars and students working in developmental, social and clinical psychology, philosophy, economics, artificial intelligence, education, and linguistics.
Feminist Epistemologies
(Thinking Gender) by Linda Martín Alcoff, Elizabeth Potter 4.14 · Rating details · 43 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/477960.Feminist_Epistemologies
Noticed this review by an evangelical:
"I have found this an immensely suggestive book, collecting as it does essays from both prominent and rising figures in feminist philosophy of knowledge--albeit from about two decades ago. I am struck by how little impact feminist thought, even of this high and generally temperate quality, has had on evangelical theology, to the shame of my guild."
-John
The Honest Truth About Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone - Especially Ourselves by Dan Ariely 3.94 · Rating details · 13,620 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13426114-the-honest-truth-about-dishonesty
The New York Times bestselling author of Predictably Irrational and The Upside of Irrationality returns with thought-provoking work to challenge our preconceptions about dishonesty and urge us to take an honest look at ourselves.
Does the chance of getting caught affect how likely we are to cheat? How do companies pave the way for dishonesty? Does collaboration make us more honest or less so? Does religion improve our honesty?
Most of us think of ourselves as honest, but, in fact, we all cheat.
From Washington to Wall Street, the classroom to the workplace, unethical behavior is everywhere. None of us is immune, whether it's the white lie to head off trouble or padding our expense reports. In The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty, award-winning, bestselling author Dan Ariely turns his unique insight and innovative research to the question of dishonesty.
Generally, we assume that cheating, like most other decisions, is based on a rational cost-benefit analysis.
But Ariely argues, and then demonstrates, that it's actually the irrational forces that we don't take into account that often determine whether we behave ethically or not.
For every Enron or political bribe, there are countless puffed résumés, hidden commissions, and knockoff purses. In The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty, Ariely shows why some things are easier to lie about; how getting caught matters less than we think; and how business practices pave the way for unethical behavior, both intentionally and unintentionally. Ariely explores how unethical behavior works in the personal, professional, and political worlds, and how it affects all of us, even as we think of ourselves as having high moral standards.
But all is not lost. Ariely also identifies what keeps us honest, pointing the way for achieving higher ethics in our everyday lives. With compelling personal and academic findings, The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty will change the way we see ourselves, our actions, and others.
The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
by Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan (Goodreads Author)
4.27 · Rating details · 59,893 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17349.The_Demon_Haunted_World
How can we make intelligent decisions about our increasingly technology-driven lives if we don’t understand the difference between the myths of pseudoscience and the testable hypotheses of science? Pulitzer Prize-winning author and distinguished astronomer Carl Sagan argues that scientific thinking is critical not only to the pursuit of truth but to the very well-being of our democratic institutions.
Casting a wide net through history and culture, Sagan examines and authoritatively debunks such celebrated fallacies of the past as witchcraft, faith healing, demons, and UFOs. And yet, disturbingly, in today's so-called information age, pseudoscience is burgeoning with stories of alien abduction, channeling past lives, and communal hallucinations commanding growing attention and respect. As Sagan demonstrates with lucid eloquence, the siren song of unreason is not just a cultural wrong turn but a dangerous plunge into darkness that threatens our most basic freedoms.
What Is the Name of This Book?
by Raymond M. Smullyan
4.24 · Rating details · 757 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/493576.What_Is_the_Name_of_This_Book_
If you're intrigued by puzzles and paradoxes, these 200 mind-bending logic puzzles, riddles, and diversions will thrill you with challenges to your powers of reason and common sense. Raymond M. Smullyan — a celebrated mathematician, logician, magician, and author — presents a logical labyrinth of more than 200 increasingly complex problems. The puzzles delve into Gödel’s undecidability theorem and other examples of the deepest paradoxes of logic and set theory. Detailed solutions follow each puzzle
The Art of Logic in an Illogical World
by Eugenia Cheng 3.55 · Rating details · 740 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38400400-the-art-of-logic-in-an-illogical-world
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.
How to Think about Weird Things: Critical Thinking for a New Age
by Theodore Schick Jr. Lewis Vaughn, Martin Gardner (Foreword)
4.00 · Rating details · 530 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41756.How_to_Think_about_Weird_Things
This text serves well as a supplemental text in:

critical thinking
logic
introduction to philosophy
philosophy of science
epistemology
metaphysics
introduction to psychology
anomalistic psychology
perception and cognition

as well as any introductory science course.
It has been used in all of the courses mentioned above as well as introductory biology, introductory physics, and introductory chemistry courses. It could also serve as a main text for courses in evaluation of the paranormal, philosophical implications of the paranormal, occult beliefs, and pseudoscience.
Popular Statistics
Naked Statistics: Stripping the Dread from the Data
by Charles Wheelan 3.94 · Rating details · 10,367 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17986418-naked-statistics
Once considered tedious, the field of statistics is rapidly evolving into a discipline Hal Varian, chief economist at Google, has actually called “sexy.” From batting averages and political polls to game shows and medical research, the real-world application of statistics continues to grow by leaps and bounds. How can we catch schools that cheat on standardized tests? How does Netflix know which movies you’ll like? What is causing the rising incidence of autism? As best-selling author Charles Wheelan shows us in Naked Statistics, the right data and a few well-chosen statistical tools can help us answer these questions and more. For those who slept through Stats 101, this book is a lifesaver. Wheelan strips away the arcane and technical details and focuses on the underlying intuition that drives statistical analysis. He clarifies key concepts such as inference, correlation, and regression analysis, reveals how biased or careless parties can manipulate or misrepresent data, and shows us how brilliant and creative researchers are exploiting the valuable data from natural experiments to tackle thorny questions.
And in Wheelan’s trademark style, there’s not a dull page in sight. You’ll encounter clever Schlitz Beer marketers leveraging basic probability, an International Sausage Festival illuminating the tenets of the central limit theorem, and a head-scratching choice from the famous game show Let’s Make a Deal—and you’ll come away with insights each time. With the wit, accessibility, and sheer fun that turned Naked Economics into a bestseller, Wheelan defies the odds yet again by bringing another essential, formerly unglamorous discipline to life.
The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail—But Some Don't by Nate Silver
3.98 · Rating details · 43,804 ratings · 3,049 reviews
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13588394-the-signal-and-the-noise
One of Wall Street Journal's Best Ten Works of Nonfiction in 2012
New York Times Bestseller
"Not so different in spirit from the way public intellectuals like John Kenneth Galbraith once shaped discussions of economic policy and public figures like Walter Cronkite helped sway opinion on the Vietnam War…could turn out to be one of the more momentous books of the decade." -New York Times Book Review
"Nate Silver's The Signal and the Noise is The Soul of a New Machine for the 21st century." -Rachel Maddow, author of Drift
"A serious treatise about the craft of prediction-without academic mathematics-cheerily aimed at lay readers. Silver's coverage is polymathic, ranging from poker and earthquakes to climate change and terrorism." -New York Review of Books
Nate Silver built an innovative system for predicting baseball performance, predicted the 2008 election within a hair's breadth, and became a national sensation as a blogger-all by the time he was thirty. He solidified his standing as the nation's foremost political forecaster with his near perfect prediction of the 2012 election. Silver is the founder and editor in chief of FiveThirtyEight.com.
Drawing on his own groundbreaking work, Silver examines the world of prediction, investigating how we can distinguish a true signal from a universe of noisy data. Most predictions fail, often at great cost to society, because most of us have a poor understanding of probability and uncertainty. Both experts and laypeople mistake more confident predictions for more accurate ones. But overconfidence is often the reason for failure. If our appreciation of uncertainty improves, our predictions can get better too. This is the "prediction paradox": The more humility we have about our ability to make predictions, the more successful we can be in planning for the future.
In keeping with his own aim to seek truth from data, Silver visits the most successful forecasters in a range of areas, from hurricanes to baseball, from the poker table to the stock market, from Capitol Hill to the NBA. He explains and evaluates how these forecasters think and what bonds they share. What lies behind their success? Are they good-or just lucky? What patterns have they unraveled? And are their forecasts really right? He explores unanticipated commonalities and exposes unexpected juxtapositions. And sometimes, it is not so much how good a prediction is in an absolute sense that matters but how good it is relative to the competition. In other cases, prediction is still a very rudimentary-and dangerous-science.
Silver observes that the most accurate forecasters tend to have a superior command of probability, and they tend to be both humble and hardworking. They distinguish the predictable from the unpredictable, and they notice a thousand little details that lead them closer to the truth. Because of their appreciation of probability, they can distinguish the signal from the noise.
With everything from the health of the global economy to our ability to fight terrorism dependent on the quality of our predictions, Nate Silver's insights are an essential read.
Bayesian Statistics the Fun Way: Understanding Statistics and Probability with Star Wars, Lego, and Rubber Ducks
by Will Kurt 4.20 · Rating details · 126 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41392893-bayesian-statistics-the-fun-way
Fun guide to learning Bayesian statistics and probability through unusual and illustrative examples.
Probability and statistics are increasingly important in a huge range of professions. But many people use data in ways they don't even understand, meaning they aren't getting the most from it. Bayesian Statistics the Fun Way will change that.
This book will give you a complete understanding of Bayesian statistics through simple explanations and un-boring examples. Find out the probability of UFOs landing in your garden, how likely Han Solo is to survive a flight through an asteroid shower, how to win an argument about conspiracy theories, and whether a burglary really was a burglary, to name a few examples.
By using these off-the-beaten-track examples, the author actually makes learning statistics fun. And you'll learn real skills, like how to:

How to measure your own level of uncertainty in a conclusion or belief
Calculate Bayes theorem and understand what it's useful for
Find the posterior, likelihood, and prior to check the accuracy of your conclusions
Calculate distributions to see the range of your data
Compare hypotheses and draw reliable conclusions from them

Books on Epistemology, Critical thinking, beliefs etc - A comprehensive list

A comprehensive list of books that might be of interest to people whom want to, or do practice SE.
They can also work as book recommendations for people whom you have spoken to, that want to read something that might improve their thinking or as gifts.
I have not read most of these, thus I can not personally vouch for them or recommend one over the other.
But if you do read any of them, or have any opinion it would be nice if you could create a post.
I'm not affiliated with Goodreads, but linked to them since they have links to several sources including libraries if you want to get any one of these, and often some quality reviews.
How to Have Impossible Conversations: A Very Practical Guide
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43885240-how-to-have-impossible-conversations by Peter Boghossian (Goodreads Author), James A. Lindsay (Goodreads Author)
3.99 · Rating details · 928 ratings
"This is a self-help book on how to argue effectively, conciliate, and gently persuade. The authors admit to getting it wrong in their own past conversations. One by one, I recognize the same mistakes in me. The world would be a better place if everyone read this book." -- Richard Dawkins, author of Science in the Soul and Outgrowing God
In our current political climate, it seems impossible to have a reasonable conversation with anyone who has a different opinion. Whether you're online, in a classroom, an office, a town hall -- or just hoping to get through a family dinner with a stubborn relative -- dialogue shuts down when perspectives clash. Heated debates often lead to insults and shaming, blocking any possibility of productive discourse. Everyone seems to be on a hair trigger.
In How to Have Impossible Conversations, Peter Boghossian and James Lindsay guide you through the straightforward, practical, conversational techniques necessary for every successful conversation -- whether the issue is climate change, religious faith, gender identity, race, poverty, immigration, or gun control. Boghossian and Lindsay teach the subtle art of instilling doubts and opening minds. They cover everything from learning the fundamentals for good conversations to achieving expert-level techniques to deal with hardliners and extremists. This book is the manual everyone needs to foster a climate of civility, connection, and empathy.
Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most
by Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, Sheila Heen
4.10 · Rating details · 12,354 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/774088.Difficult_Conversations
Whether you're dealing with an under performing employee, disagreeing with your spouse about money or child-rearing, negotiating with a difficult client, or simply saying "no," or "I'm sorry," or "I love you," we attempt or avoid difficult conversation every day. Based on fifteen years of research at the Harvard Negotiation Project, Difficult Conversations walks you through a step-by-step proven approach to having your toughest conversations with less stress and more success.
You will learn: -- how to start the conversation without defensiveness -- why what is not said is as important as what is -- ways of keeping and regaining your balance in the face of attacks and accusations -- how to decipher the underlying structure of every difficult conversation
Filled with examples from everyday life, Difficult Conversations will help you on your job, at home, or out of the world. It is a book you will turn to again and again for advice, practical skills, and reassurance.
The Thinker's Guide to Socratic Questioning by Dr. Linda Elder
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7276284-the-thinker-s-guide-to-socratic-questioning
Focuses on the mechanics of Socratic dialogue, on the conceptual tools that critical thinking brings to Socratic dialogue, and on the importance of questioning in cultivating the disciplined mind.
About author:
Dr. Linda Elder is an educational psychologist and a prominent authority on critical thinking. She is President of the Foundation for Critical Thinking and Executive Director of the Center for Critical Thinking.
From a review:
"...it is primarily a set of instructions detailing how to lead a Socratic dialog among (different ages of) K-12 students."
-Feliks
A Manual for Creating Atheists
by Peter Boghossian (Goodreads Author), Michael Shermer (Foreword) 3.93 · Rating details · 1,983 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17937621-a-manual-for-creating-atheists
For thousands of years, the faithful have honed proselytizing strategies and talked people into believing the truth of one holy book or another. Indeed, the faithful often view converting others as an obligation of their faith—and are trained from an early age to spread their unique brand of religion. The result is a world broken in large part by unquestioned faith. As an urgently needed counter to this tried-and-true tradition of religious evangelism, A Manual for Creating Atheists offers the first-ever guide not for talking people into faith—but for talking them out of it. Peter Boghossian draws on the tools he has developed and used for more than twenty years as a philosopher and educator to teach how to engage the faithful in conversations that will help them value reason and rationality, cast doubt on their religious beliefs, mistrust their faith, abandon superstition, and irrationality, and ultimately embrace reason.
The Believing Brain: From Ghosts and Gods to Politics and Conspiracies How We Construct Beliefs and Reinforce Them as Truths
by Michael Shermer 3.93 · Rating details · 6,985 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9754534-the-believing-brain
The Believing Brain is bestselling author Michael Shermer's comprehensive and provocative theory on how beliefs are born, formed, reinforced, challenged, changed, and extinguished.
In this work synthesizing thirty years of research, psychologist, historian of science, and the world's best-known skeptic Michael Shermer upends the traditional thinking about how humans form beliefs about the world. Simply put, beliefs come first and explanations for beliefs follow. The brain, Shermer argues, is a belief engine. From sensory data flowing in through the senses, the brain naturally begins to look for and find patterns, and then infuses those patterns with meaning. Our brains connect the dots of our world into meaningful patterns that explain why things happen, and these patterns become beliefs. Once beliefs are formed the brain begins to look for and find confirmatory evidence in support of those beliefs, which accelerates the process of reinforcing them, and round and round the process goes in a positive-feedback loop of belief confirmation. Shermer outlines the numerous cognitive tools our brains engage to reinforce our beliefs as truths.
Interlaced with his theory of belief, Shermer provides countless real-world examples of how this process operates, from politics, economics, and religion to conspiracy theories, the supernatural, and the paranormal. Ultimately, he demonstrates why science is the best tool ever devised to determine whether or not a belief matches reality.
Critical Thinking: Tools for Taking Charge of Your Professional and Personal Life
by Richard Paul,Linda Elder 3.93 · Rating details · 1,082 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17296839-critical-thinking
Critical Thinking is about becoming a better thinker in every aspect of your life: in your career, and as a consumer, citizen, friend, parent, and lover. Discover the core skills of effective thinking; then analyze your own thought processes, identify weaknesses, and overcome them. Learn how to translate more effective thinking into better decisions, less frustration, more wealth Ñ and above all, greater confidence to pursue and achieve your most important goals in life.
The Thinker's Guide to Analytic Thinking by Linda Elder,Richard Paul
3.89 · Rating details · 163 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/19227921-the-thinker-s-guide-to-analytic-thinking
This guide focuses on the intellectual skills that enable one to analyze anything one might think about - questions, problems, disciplines, subjects, etc. It provides the common denominator between all forms of analysis.
It is based on the assumption that all reasoning can be taken apart and analyzed for quality.
This guide introduces the elements of reasoning as implicit in all reasoning. It begins with this idea - that whenever we think, we think for a purpose, within a point of view, based on assumptions, leading to implications and consequences. We use data, facts and experiences (information), to make inferences and judgments,based on concepts and theories to answer a question or solve a problem. Thus the elements of thought are: purpose, questions, information, inferences, assumptions, concepts, implications and point of view. In this guide, authors Linda Elder and Richard Paul explain, exemplify and contextualize these elements or structures of thought, showing the importance of analyzing reasoning in every part of human life. This guide can be used as a supplement to any text or course at the college level; and it may be used for improving thinking in personal and professional life.
The Thinker's Guide to Intellectual Standards by Linda Elder, Richard Paul
4.19 · Rating details · 16 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/19017637-the-thinker-s-guide-to-intellectual-standards
Humans routinely assess thinking – their own thinking, and that of others, and yet they don’t necessarily use standards for thought that are reasonable, rational, sound.
To think well, people need to routinely meet intellectual standards, standards of clarity, precision, accuracy, relevance, depth, logic, fairness, significance, and so forth.
In this guide authors Elder and Paul offer a brief analysis of some of the most important intellectual standards in the English language. They look at the opposites of these standards. They argue for their contextualization within subjects and disciplines. And, they call attention to the forces that undermine their skilled use in thinking well. At present intellectual standards tend to be either taught implicitly, or ignored in instruction. Yet because they are essential to high quality reasoning in every part of human life, they should be explicitly taught and explicitly understood.
The Truth Seeker’s Handbook: A Science-Based Guide by Gleb Tsipursky (Goodreads Author) 4.24 · Rating details · 63 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36800752-the-truth-seeker-s-handbook
How do you know whether something is true? How do you convince others to believe the facts?
Research shows that the human mind is prone to making thinking errors - predictable mistakes that cause us to believe comfortable lies over inconvenient truths. These errors leave us vulnerable to making decisions based on false beliefs, leading to disastrous consequences for our personal lives, relationships, careers, civic and political engagement, and for our society as a whole.
Fortunately, cognitive and behavioral scientists have uncovered many useful strategies for overcoming our mental flaws.
This book presents a variety of research-based tools for ensuring that our beliefs are aligned with reality.
With examples from daily life and an engaging style, the book will provide you with the skills to avoid thinking errors and help others to do so, preventing disasters and facilitating success for yourself, those you care about, and our society.
On Being Certain: Believing You Are Right Even When You're Not
by Robert A. Burton 3.90 · Rating details · 2,165 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2740964-on-being-certain
You recognize when you know something for certain, right? You "know" the sky is blue, or that the traffic light had turned green, or where you were on the morning of September 11, 2001--you know these things, well, because you just do. In On Being Certain, neurologist Robert Burton challenges the notions of how we think about what we know.
He shows that the feeling of certainty we have when we "know" something comes from sources beyond our control and knowledge.
In fact, certainty is a mental sensation, rather than evidence of fact.
Because this "feeling of knowing" seems like confirmation of knowledge, we tend to think of it as a product of reason.
But an increasing body of evidence suggests that feelings such as certainty stem from primitive areas of the brain, and are independent of active, conscious reflection and reasoning. The feeling of knowing happens to us; we cannot make it happen. Bringing together cutting edge neuroscience, experimental data, and fascinating anecdotes, Robert Burton explores the inconsistent and sometimes paradoxical relationship between our thoughts and what we actually know.
Provocative and groundbreaking, On Being Certain, will challenge what you know (or think you know) about the mind, knowledge, and reason.
Asking the Right Questions: A Guide to Critical Thinking
by M. Neil Browne, Stuart M. Keeley
3.94 · Rating details · 1,290 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/394398.Asking_the_Right_Questions
The habits and attitudes associated with critical thinking are transferable to consumer, medical, legal, and general ethical choices. When our surgeon says surgery is needed, it can be life sustaining to seek answers to the critical questions encouraged in Asking the Right Questions This popular book helps bridge the gap between simply memorizing or blindly accepting information, and the greater challenge of critical analysing the things we are told and read. It gives strategies for responding to alternative points of view and will help readers develop a solid foundation for making personal choices about what to accept and what to reject.
On Truth by Simon Blackburn 3.60 · Rating details · 62 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36722220-on-truth
Truth is not just a recent topic of contention. Arguments about it have gone on for centuries. Why is the truth important? Who decides what the truth is? Is there such a thing as objective, eternal truth, or is truth simply a matter of perspective, of linguistic or cultural vantage point?
In this concise book Simon Blackburn provides an accessible explanation of what truth is and how we might think about it.
The first half of the book details several main approaches to how we should think about, and decide, what is true.
These are philosophical theories of truth such as the correspondence theory, the coherence theory, deflationism, and others.
He then examines how those approaches relate to truth in several contentious domains: art, ethics, reasoning, religion, and the interpretation of texts.
Blackburn's overall message is that truth is often best thought of not as a product or an end point that is 'finally' achieved, but--as the American pragmatist thinkers thought of it--as an ongoing process of inquiry. The result is an accessible and tour through some of the deepest and thorniest questions philosophy has ever tackled
Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
4.16 · Rating details · 317,352 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11468377-thinking-fast-and-slow?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=ZNhf1bAIxd&rank=1
In the highly anticipated Thinking, Fast and Slow, Kahneman takes us on a groundbreaking tour of the mind and explains the two systems that drive the way we think. System 1 is fast, intuitive, and emotional; System 2 is slower, more deliberative, and more logical. Kahneman exposes the extraordinary capabilities—and also the faults and biases—of fast thinking, and reveals the pervasive influence of intuitive impressions on our thoughts and behavior. The impact of loss aversion and overconfidence on corporate strategies, the difficulties of predicting what will make us happy in the future, the challenges of properly framing risks at work and at home, the profound effect of cognitive biases on everything from playing the stock market to planning the next vacation—each of these can be understood only by knowing how the two systems work together to shape our judgments and decisions.
Engaging the reader in a lively conversation about how we think, Kahneman reveals where we can and cannot trust our intuitions and how we can tap into the benefits of slow thinking.
He offers practical and enlightening insights into how choices are made in both our business and our personal lives—and how we can use different techniques to guard against the mental glitches that often get us into trouble. Thinking, Fast and Slow will transform the way you think about thinking.
Before You Know It: The Unconscious Reasons We Do What We Do by John A. Bargh (Goodreads Author)
3.97 · Rating details · 788 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35011639-before-you-know-it
Dr. John Bargh, the world’s leading expert on the unconscious mind, presents a “brilliant and convincing book” (Malcolm Gladwell) cited as an outstanding read of 2017 by Business Insider and The Financial Times—giving us an entirely new understanding of the hidden mental processes that secretly govern every aspect of our behavior.
For more than three decades, Dr. John Bargh has conducted revolutionary research into the unconscious mind, research featured in bestsellers like Blink and Thinking Fast and Slow. Now, in what Dr. John Gottman said was “the most important and exciting book in psychology that has been written in the past twenty years,” Dr. Bargh takes us on an entertaining and enlightening tour of the forces that affect everyday behavior while transforming our understanding of ourselves in profound ways.
Dr. Bargh takes us into his labs at New York University and Yale—where he and his colleagues have discovered how the unconscious guides our behavior, goals, and motivations in areas like race relations, parenting, business, consumer behavior, and addiction.
With infectious enthusiasm he reveals what science now knows about the pervasive influence of the unconscious mind in who we choose to date or vote for, what we buy, where we live, how we perform on tests and in job interviews, and much more.
Because the unconscious works in ways we are completely unaware of, Before You Know It is full of surprising and entertaining revelations as well as useful tricks to help you remember items on your to-do list, to shop smarter, and to sleep better.
Before You Know It is “a fascinating compendium of landmark social-psychology research” (Publishers Weekly) and an introduction to a fabulous world that exists below the surface of your awareness and yet is the key to knowing yourself and unlocking new ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving.
Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38315.Fooled_by_Randomness
by Nassim Nicholas Taleb 4.07 · Rating details · 49,010 ratings
Fooled by Randomness is a standalone book in Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s landmark Incerto series, an investigation of opacity, luck, uncertainty, probability, human error, risk, and decision-making in a world we don’t understand.
Philosophy books
Epistemology by Richard Feldman 3.84 · Rating details · 182 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/387295.Epistemology
Sophisticated yet accessible and easy to read, this introduction to contemporary philosophical questions about knowledge and rationality goes beyond the usual bland survey of the major current views to show that there is argument involved. Throughout, the author provides a fair and balanced blending of the standard positions on epistemology with his own carefully reasoned positions or stances into the analysis of each concept. KEY TOPICS: Epistemological Questions. The Traditional Analysis of Knowledge. Modifying the Traditional Analysis of Knowledge. Evidentialist Theories of Justification. Non-evidentialist Theories of Knowledge and Justification. Skepticism. Epistemology and Science. Relativism.
Problems of Knowledge: A Critical Introduction to Epistemology by Michael J. Williams
3.79 · Rating details · 86 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/477904.Problems_of_Knowledge
"What is epistemology or 'the theory of knowledge'? Why does it matter? What makes theorizing about knowledge 'philosophical'? And why do some philosophers argue that epistemology - perhaps even philosophy itself - is dead?" "
In this introduction, Michael Williams answers these questions, showing how epistemological theorizing is sensitive to a range of questions about the nature, limits, methods, and value of knowing.
He pays special attention to the challenge of philosophical scepticism: does our 'knowledge' rest on brute assumptions? Does the rational outlook undermine itself?"
Williams explains and criticizes all the main contemporary philosophical perspectives on human knowledge, such as foundationalism, the coherence theory, and 'naturalistic' theories. As an alternative to all of them, he defends his distinctive contextualist approach.
As well as providing an accessible introduction for any reader approaching the subject for the first time, this book incorporates Williams's own ideas which will be of interest to all philosophers concerned with the theory of knowledge.
Epistemology: A Contemporary Introduction to the Theory of Knowledge by Robert Audi
3.54 · Rating details · 176 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/477976.Epistemology
This comprehensive book introduces the concepts and theories central for understanding knowledge. It aims to reach students who have already done an introductory philosophy course. Topics covered include perception and reflection as grounds of knowledge, and the nature, structure, and varieties of knowledge. The character and scope of knowledge in the crucial realms of ethics, science and religion are also considered. Unique features of Epistemology:

Provides a comprehensive survey of basic concepts and major theories
Gives an up-to-date account of important developments in the field
Contains many lucid examples to support ideas
Cites key literature in an annotated bibliography.

The Oxford Handbook of Thinking and Reasoning
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/14829260-the-oxford-handbook-of-thinking-and-reasoning
by Keith J. Holyoak (Editor), Robert G. Morrison (Editor)
4.08 · Rating details · 12 ratings
Thinking and reasoning, long the academic province of philosophy, have over the past century emerged as core topics of empirical investigation and theoretical analysis in the modern fields of cognitive psychology, cognitive science, and cognitive neuroscience. Formerly seen as too complicated and amorphous to be included in early textbooks on the science of cognition, the study of thinking and reasoning has since taken off, brancing off in a distinct direction from the field from which it originated.
The Oxford Handbook of Thinking and Reasoning is a comprehensive and authoritative handbook covering all the core topics of the field of thinking and reasoning.
Written by the foremost experts from cognitive psychology, cognitive science, and cognitive neuroscience, individual chapters summarize basic concepts and findings for a major topic, sketch its history, and give a sense of the directions in which research is currently heading.
Chapters include introductions to foundational issues and methods of study in the field, as well as treatment of specific types of thinking and reasoning and their application in a broad range of fields including business, education, law, medicine, music, and science.
The volume will be of interest to scholars and students working in developmental, social and clinical psychology, philosophy, economics, artificial intelligence, education, and linguistics.
Feminist Epistemologies
(Thinking Gender) by Linda Martín Alcoff, Elizabeth Potter 4.14 · Rating details · 43 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/477960.Feminist_Epistemologies
Noticed this review by an evangelical:
"I have found this an immensely suggestive book, collecting as it does essays from both prominent and rising figures in feminist philosophy of knowledge--albeit from about two decades ago. I am struck by how little impact feminist thought, even of this high and generally temperate quality, has had on evangelical theology, to the shame of my guild."
-John
The Invisible Gorilla: And Other Ways Our Intuitions Deceive Us
by Christopher Chabris, Daniel Simons 3.91 Rating details · 13,537 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7783191-the-invisible-gorilla
Reading this book will make you less sure of yourself—and that’s a good thing. In The Invisible Gorilla, Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons, creators of one of psychology’s most famous experiments, use remarkable stories and counterintuitive scientific findings to demonstrate an important truth: Our minds don’t work the way we think they do. We think we see ourselves and the world as they really are, but we’re actually missing a whole lot.
Again and again, we think we experience and understand the world as it is, but our thoughts are beset by everyday illusions. We write traffic laws and build criminal cases on the assumption that people will notice when something unusual happens right in front of them. We’re sure we know where we were on 9/11, falsely believing that vivid memories are seared into our minds with perfect fidelity. And as a society, we spend billions on devices to train our brains because we’re continually tempted by the lure of quick fixes and effortless self-improvement.
The Invisible Gorilla reveals the myriad ways that our intuitions can deceive us, but it’s much more than a catalog of human failings. Chabris and Simons explain why we succumb to these everyday illusions and what we can do to inoculate ourselves against their effects. Ultimately, the book provides a kind of x-ray vision into our own minds, making it possible to pierce the veil of illusions that clouds our thoughts and to think clearly for perhaps the first time.
The Honest Truth About Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone - Especially Ourselves by Dan Ariely 3.94 · Rating details · 13,620 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13426114-the-honest-truth-about-dishonesty
The New York Times bestselling author of Predictably Irrational and The Upside of Irrationality returns with thought-provoking work to challenge our preconceptions about dishonesty and urge us to take an honest look at ourselves.
Does the chance of getting caught affect how likely we are to cheat? How do companies pave the way for dishonesty? Does collaboration make us more honest or less so? Does religion improve our honesty?
Most of us think of ourselves as honest, but, in fact, we all cheat.
From Washington to Wall Street, the classroom to the workplace, unethical behavior is everywhere. None of us is immune, whether it's the white lie to head off trouble or padding our expense reports. In The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty, award-winning, bestselling author Dan Ariely turns his unique insight and innovative research to the question of dishonesty.
Generally, we assume that cheating, like most other decisions, is based on a rational cost-benefit analysis.
But Ariely argues, and then demonstrates, that it's actually the irrational forces that we don't take into account that often determine whether we behave ethically or not.
For every Enron or political bribe, there are countless puffed résumés, hidden commissions, and knockoff purses. In The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty, Ariely shows why some things are easier to lie about; how getting caught matters less than we think; and how business practices pave the way for unethical behavior, both intentionally and unintentionally. Ariely explores how unethical behavior works in the personal, professional, and political worlds, and how it affects all of us, even as we think of ourselves as having high moral standards.
But all is not lost. Ariely also identifies what keeps us honest, pointing the way for achieving higher ethics in our everyday lives. With compelling personal and academic findings, The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty will change the way we see ourselves, our actions, and others.
How to Stop Believing in Hell: a Schizophrenic's Religious Experience: Intellectual Honesty and Hallucinations - A Memoir
by Robert Clayton Kimball
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22020049-how-to-stop-believing-in-hell
it was amazing 5.00 · Rating details · 1 rating Kirkus Reviews:
“…Kimball’s debut explores his hallucinatory religious mania, from his early childhood onward, beginning when he attended Catholic school. The early pages guide readers through narratives of his uncomfortable childhood traumas, sometimes in ugly detail…. Various other moments of shame revolved around school. Finding sex repugnant and sinful, he decided early on to remain celibate; he avoided sex until his eventual institutionalization. Meanwhile, hallucinatory monsters—including Lorus, “a turbulent face, golden like the comedy mask…”—and company pushed him away from religion, though he did convert to Pentecostalism in spite of them. Through this process, Kimball developed a solipsistic worldview, in which he was never sure others existed. Ultimately, though, it was his fear of damnation that became his greatest obsession, driving all the rest of his delusions and fears. He does exhibit a flair for description…: “On summer evenings, I liked to stand on the arroyo side of the house at night, alone, feeling the desert breeze through the tamarisks and smelling the clean desert smells in the warm darkness. The long row of tamarisks, with its tens of thousands of insects of a thousand species, hummed like the telephone network in The Castle, a beautiful, accidental music.’”
Author’s Description:
How to Stop Believing in Hell, describes the narrator's passage from a golden childhood to an adolescence of cringing guilt and religious fear. By the age of thirty, he had become a deranged street person, screaming horrible obscenities on crowded sidewalks in broad daylight. He desperately tried to stop but couldn’t. He was still filled with the fear of Hell. Then he had a spiritual awakening, broke free of his dementia, and learned to act deliberately. A paperback copy of this book can be purchased through my publisher, Chipmunka Publishing at their web site.
The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
by Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan (Goodreads Author)
4.27 · Rating details · 59,893 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17349.The_Demon_Haunted_World
How can we make intelligent decisions about our increasingly technology-driven lives if we don’t understand the difference between the myths of pseudoscience and the testable hypotheses of science? Pulitzer Prize-winning author and distinguished astronomer Carl Sagan argues that scientific thinking is critical not only to the pursuit of truth but to the very well-being of our democratic institutions.
Casting a wide net through history and culture, Sagan examines and authoritatively debunks such celebrated fallacies of the past as witchcraft, faith healing, demons, and UFOs. And yet, disturbingly, in today's so-called information age, pseudoscience is burgeoning with stories of alien abduction, channeling past lives, and communal hallucinations commanding growing attention and respect. As Sagan demonstrates with lucid eloquence, the siren song of unreason is not just a cultural wrong turn but a dangerous plunge into darkness that threatens our most basic freedoms.
How to Think about Weird Things: Critical Thinking for a New Age
by Theodore Schick Jr. Lewis Vaughn, Martin Gardner (Foreword)
4.00 · Rating details · 530 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41756.How_to_Think_about_Weird_Things
This text serves well as a supplemental text in:

critical thinking
logic
introduction to philosophy
philosophy of science
epistemology
metaphysics
introduction to psychology
anomalistic psychology
perception and cognition

as well as any introductory science course.
It has been used in all of the courses mentioned above as well as introductory biology, introductory physics, and introductory chemistry courses. It could also serve as a main text for courses in evaluation of the paranormal, philosophical implications of the paranormal, occult beliefs, and pseudoscience.
Popular Statistics
Naked Statistics: Stripping the Dread from the Data
by Charles Wheelan 3.94 · Rating details · 10,367 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17986418-naked-statistics
Once considered tedious, the field of statistics is rapidly evolving into a discipline Hal Varian, chief economist at Google, has actually called “sexy.” From batting averages and political polls to game shows and medical research, the real-world application of statistics continues to grow by leaps and bounds. How can we catch schools that cheat on standardized tests? How does Netflix know which movies you’ll like? What is causing the rising incidence of autism? As best-selling author Charles Wheelan shows us in Naked Statistics, the right data and a few well-chosen statistical tools can help us answer these questions and more. For those who slept through Stats 101, this book is a lifesaver. Wheelan strips away the arcane and technical details and focuses on the underlying intuition that drives statistical analysis. He clarifies key concepts such as inference, correlation, and regression analysis, reveals how biased or careless parties can manipulate or misrepresent data, and shows us how brilliant and creative researchers are exploiting the valuable data from natural experiments to tackle thorny questions.
And in Wheelan’s trademark style, there’s not a dull page in sight. You’ll encounter clever Schlitz Beer marketers leveraging basic probability, an International Sausage Festival illuminating the tenets of the central limit theorem, and a head-scratching choice from the famous game show Let’s Make a Deal—and you’ll come away with insights each time. With the wit, accessibility, and sheer fun that turned Naked Economics into a bestseller, Wheelan defies the odds yet again by bringing another essential, formerly unglamorous discipline to life.
The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail—But Some Don't by Nate Silver
3.98 · Rating details · 43,804 ratings · 3,049 reviews
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13588394-the-signal-and-the-noise
One of Wall Street Journal's Best Ten Works of Nonfiction in 2012
New York Times Bestseller
"Not so different in spirit from the way public intellectuals like John Kenneth Galbraith once shaped discussions of economic policy and public figures like Walter Cronkite helped sway opinion on the Vietnam War…could turn out to be one of the more momentous books of the decade." -New York Times Book Review
"Nate Silver's The Signal and the Noise is The Soul of a New Machine for the 21st century." -Rachel Maddow, author of Drift
"A serious treatise about the craft of prediction-without academic mathematics-cheerily aimed at lay readers. Silver's coverage is polymathic, ranging from poker and earthquakes to climate change and terrorism." -New York Review of Books
Nate Silver built an innovative system for predicting baseball performance, predicted the 2008 election within a hair's breadth, and became a national sensation as a blogger-all by the time he was thirty. He solidified his standing as the nation's foremost political forecaster with his near perfect prediction of the 2012 election. Silver is the founder and editor in chief of FiveThirtyEight.com.
Drawing on his own groundbreaking work, Silver examines the world of prediction, investigating how we can distinguish a true signal from a universe of noisy data. Most predictions fail, often at great cost to society, because most of us have a poor understanding of probability and uncertainty. Both experts and laypeople mistake more confident predictions for more accurate ones. But overconfidence is often the reason for failure. If our appreciation of uncertainty improves, our predictions can get better too. This is the "prediction paradox": The more humility we have about our ability to make predictions, the more successful we can be in planning for the future.
In keeping with his own aim to seek truth from data, Silver visits the most successful forecasters in a range of areas, from hurricanes to baseball, from the poker table to the stock market, from Capitol Hill to the NBA. He explains and evaluates how these forecasters think and what bonds they share. What lies behind their success? Are they good-or just lucky? What patterns have they unraveled? And are their forecasts really right? He explores unanticipated commonalities and exposes unexpected juxtapositions. And sometimes, it is not so much how good a prediction is in an absolute sense that matters but how good it is relative to the competition. In other cases, prediction is still a very rudimentary-and dangerous-science.
Silver observes that the most accurate forecasters tend to have a superior command of probability, and they tend to be both humble and hardworking. They distinguish the predictable from the unpredictable, and they notice a thousand little details that lead them closer to the truth. Because of their appreciation of probability, they can distinguish the signal from the noise.
With everything from the health of the global economy to our ability to fight terrorism dependent on the quality of our predictions, Nate Silver's insights are an essential read.
Bayesian Statistics the Fun Way: Understanding Statistics and Probability with Star Wars, Lego, and Rubber Ducks
by Will Kurt 4.21 · Rating details · 128 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41392893-bayesian-statistics-the-fun-way
Fun guide to learning Bayesian statistics and probability through unusual and illustrative examples.
Probability and statistics are increasingly important in a huge range of professions. But many people use data in ways they don't even understand, meaning they aren't getting the most from it. Bayesian Statistics the Fun Way will change that.
This book will give you a complete understanding of Bayesian statistics through simple explanations and un-boring examples. Find out the probability of UFOs landing in your garden, how likely Han Solo is to survive a flight through an asteroid shower, how to win an argument about conspiracy theories, and whether a burglary really was a burglary, to name a few examples.
By using these off-the-beaten-track examples, the author actually makes learning statistics fun. And you'll learn real skills, like how to:

How to measure your own level of uncertainty in a conclusion or belief
Calculate Bayes theorem and understand what it's useful for
Find the posterior, likelihood, and prior to check the accuracy of your conclusions
Calculate distributions to see the range of your data
Compare hypotheses and draw reliable conclusions from them

Next time you find yourself with a sheaf of survey results and no idea what to do with them, turn to Bayesian Statistics the Fun Way to get the most value from your data.

Books that promote and can improve critical thinking

A comprehensive list of books that might be of interest to people that want to read something that would improve their thinking or some friends?
I have not read many of these, thus I can not personally vouch for all of them or recommend one over the other.
I'm not affiliated with Goodreads, but linked to them since I wanted to include the ratings and they have links to several different sources including libraries if you want to borrow or acquire any one of these, and often some quality reviews.
I posted this list in /books, but could not crosspost to here, so I post it here.
The Believing Brain: From Ghosts and Gods to Politics and Conspiracies How We Construct Beliefs and Reinforce Them as Truths
by Michael Shermer 3.93 · Rating details · 6,985 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9754534-the-believing-brain
The Believing Brain is bestselling author Michael Shermer's comprehensive and provocative theory on how beliefs are born, formed, reinforced, challenged, changed, and extinguished.
In this work synthesizing thirty years of research, psychologist, historian of science, and the world's best-known skeptic Michael Shermer upends the traditional thinking about how humans form beliefs about the world. Simply put, beliefs come first and explanations for beliefs follow. The brain, Shermer argues, is a belief engine. From sensory data flowing in through the senses, the brain naturally begins to look for and find patterns, and then infuses those patterns with meaning. Our brains connect the dots of our world into meaningful patterns that explain why things happen, and these patterns become beliefs. Once beliefs are formed the brain begins to look for and find confirmatory evidence in support of those beliefs, which accelerates the process of reinforcing them, and round and round the process goes in a positive-feedback loop of belief confirmation. Shermer outlines the numerous cognitive tools our brains engage to reinforce our beliefs as truths.
Interlaced with his theory of belief, Shermer provides countless real-world examples of how this process operates, from politics, economics, and religion to conspiracy theories, the supernatural, and the paranormal. Ultimately, he demonstrates why science is the best tool ever devised to determine whether or not a belief matches reality.
Critical Thinking: Tools for Taking Charge of Your Professional and Personal Life
by Richard Paul, Linda Elder
3.93 · Rating details · 1,082 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17296839-critical-thinking
Critical Thinking is about becoming a better thinker in every aspect of your life: in your career, and as a consumer, citizen, friend, parent, and lover.
Discover the core skills of effective thinking; then analyze your own thought processes, identify weaknesses, and overcome them. Learn how to translate more effective thinking into better decisions, less frustration, more wealth Ñ and above all, greater confidence to pursue and achieve your most important goals in life.
The Thinker's Guide to Analytic Thinking by Linda Elder,Richard Paul
3.89 · Rating details · 163 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/19227921-the-thinker-s-guide-to-analytic-thinking
This guide focuses on the intellectual skills that enable one to analyze anything one might think about - questions, problems, disciplines, subjects, etc. It provides the common denominator between all forms of analysis.
It is based on the assumption that all reasoning can be taken apart and analyzed for quality.
This guide introduces the elements of reasoning as implicit in all reasoning. It begins with this idea - that whenever we think, we think for a purpose, within a point of view, based on assumptions, leading to implications and consequences. We use data, facts and experiences (information), to make inferences and judgments,based on concepts and theories to answer a question or solve a problem. Thus the elements of thought are: purpose, questions, information, inferences, assumptions, concepts, implications and point of view. In this guide, authors Linda Elder and Richard Paul explain, exemplify and contextualize these elements or structures of thought, showing the importance of analyzing reasoning in every part of human life. This guide can be used as a supplement to any text or course at the college level; and it may be used for improving thinking in personal and professional life.
The Thinker's Guide to Intellectual Standards by Linda Elder, Richard Paul
4.19 · Rating details · 16 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/19017637-the-thinker-s-guide-to-intellectual-standards
Humans routinely assess thinking – their own thinking, and that of others, and yet they don’t necessarily use standards for thought that are reasonable, rational, sound.
To think well, people need to routinely meet intellectual standards, standards of clarity, precision, accuracy, relevance, depth, logic, fairness, significance, and so forth.
In this guide authors Elder and Paul offer a brief analysis of some of the most important intellectual standards in the English language. They look at the opposites of these standards. They argue for their contextualization within subjects and disciplines. And, they call attention to the forces that undermine their skilled use in thinking well. At present intellectual standards tend to be either taught implicitly, or ignored in instruction. Yet because they are essential to high quality reasoning in every part of human life, they should be explicitly taught and explicitly understood.
The Truth Seeker’s Handbook: A Science-Based Guide by Gleb Tsipursky (Goodreads Author) 4.24 · Rating details · 63 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36800752-the-truth-seeker-s-handbook
How do you know whether something is true? How do you convince others to believe the facts?
Research shows that the human mind is prone to making thinking errors - predictable mistakes that cause us to believe comfortable lies over inconvenient truths. These errors leave us vulnerable to making decisions based on false beliefs, leading to disastrous consequences for our personal lives, relationships, careers, civic and political engagement, and for our society as a whole.
Fortunately, cognitive and behavioral scientists have uncovered many useful strategies for overcoming our mental flaws.
This book presents a variety of research-based tools for ensuring that our beliefs are aligned with reality.
With examples from daily life and an engaging style, the book will provide you with the skills to avoid thinking errors and help others to do so, preventing disasters and facilitating success for yourself, those you care about, and our society.
On Being Certain: Believing You Are Right Even When You're Not
by Robert A. Burton 3.90 · Rating details · 2,165 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2740964-on-being-certain
You recognize when you know something for certain, right? You "know" the sky is blue, or that the traffic light had turned green, or where you were on the morning of September 11, 2001--you know these things, well, because you just do. In On Being Certain, neurologist Robert Burton challenges the notions of how we think about what we know.
He shows that the feeling of certainty we have when we "know" something comes from sources beyond our control and knowledge.
In fact, certainty is a mental sensation, rather than evidence of fact.
Because this "feeling of knowing" seems like confirmation of knowledge, we tend to think of it as a product of reason.
But an increasing body of evidence suggests that feelings such as certainty stem from primitive areas of the brain, and are independent of active, conscious reflection and reasoning. The feeling of knowing happens to us; we cannot make it happen. Bringing together cutting edge neuroscience, experimental data, and fascinating anecdotes, Robert Burton explores the inconsistent and sometimes paradoxical relationship between our thoughts and what we actually know.
Provocative and groundbreaking, On Being Certain, will challenge what you know (or think you know) about the mind, knowledge, and reason.
The Invisible Gorilla: And Other Ways Our Intuitions Deceive Us
by Christopher Chabris,Daniel Simons 3.91 · Rating details · 13,537 ratings · 704 reviews
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7783191-the-invisible-gorilla
Reading this book will make you less sure of yourself—and that’s a good thing. In The Invisible Gorilla, Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons, creators of one of psychology’s most famous experiments, use remarkable stories and counterintuitive scientific findings to demonstrate an important truth: Our minds don’t work the way we think they do. We think we see ourselves and the world as they really are, but we’re actually missing a whole lot.
Again and again, we think we experience and understand the world as it is, but our thoughts are beset by everyday illusions. We write traffic laws and build criminal cases on the assumption that people will notice when something unusual happens right in front of them. We’re sure we know where we were on 9/11, falsely believing that vivid memories are seared into our minds with perfect fidelity. And as a society, we spend billions on devices to train our brains because we’re continually tempted by the lure of quick fixes and effortless self-improvement.
The Invisible Gorilla reveals the myriad ways that our intuitions can deceive us, but it’s much more than a catalog of human failings. Chabris and Simons explain why we succumb to these everyday illusions and what we can do to inoculate ourselves against their effects. Ultimately, the book provides a kind of x-ray vision into our own minds, making it possible to pierce the veil of illusions that clouds our thoughts and to think clearly for perhaps the first time.
Asking the Right Questions: A Guide to Critical Thinking
by M. Neil Browne, Stuart M. Keeley
3.94 · Rating details · 1,290 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/394398.Asking_the_Right_Questions
The habits and attitudes associated with critical thinking are transferable to consumer, medical, legal, and general ethical choices. When our surgeon says surgery is needed, it can be life sustaining to seek answers to the critical questions encouraged in Asking the Right Questions This popular book helps bridge the gap between simply memorizing or blindly accepting information, and the greater challenge of critical analysing the things we are told and read. It gives strategies for responding to alternative points of view and will help readers develop a solid foundation for making personal choices about what to accept and what to reject.
On Truth by Simon Blackburn 3.60 · Rating details · 62 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36722220-on-truth
Truth is not just a recent topic of contention. Arguments about it have gone on for centuries. Why is the truth important? Who decides what the truth is? Is there such a thing as objective, eternal truth, or is truth simply a matter of perspective, of linguistic or cultural vantage point?
In this concise book Simon Blackburn provides an accessible explanation of what truth is and how we might think about it.
The first half of the book details several main approaches to how we should think about, and decide, what is true.
These are philosophical theories of truth such as the correspondence theory, the coherence theory, deflationism, and others.
He then examines how those approaches relate to truth in several contentious domains: art, ethics, reasoning, religion, and the interpretation of texts.
Blackburn's overall message is that truth is often best thought of not as a product or an end point that is 'finally' achieved, but--as the American pragmatist thinkers thought of it--as an ongoing process of inquiry. The result is an accessible and tour through some of the deepest and thorniest questions philosophy has ever tackled
Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
4.16 · Rating details · 317,352 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11468377-thinking-fast-and-slow?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=ZNhf1bAIxd&rank=1
In the highly anticipated Thinking, Fast and Slow, Kahneman takes us on a groundbreaking tour of the mind and explains the two systems that drive the way we think. System 1 is fast, intuitive, and emotional; System 2 is slower, more deliberative, and more logical. Kahneman exposes the extraordinary capabilities—and also the faults and biases—of fast thinking, and reveals the pervasive influence of intuitive impressions on our thoughts and behavior. The impact of loss aversion and overconfidence on corporate strategies, the difficulties of predicting what will make us happy in the future, the challenges of properly framing risks at work and at home, the profound effect of cognitive biases on everything from playing the stock market to planning the next vacation—each of these can be understood only by knowing how the two systems work together to shape our judgments and decisions.
Engaging the reader in a lively conversation about how we think, Kahneman reveals where we can and cannot trust our intuitions and how we can tap into the benefits of slow thinking.
He offers practical and enlightening insights into how choices are made in both our business and our personal lives—and how we can use different techniques to guard against the mental glitches that often get us into trouble. Thinking, Fast and Slow will transform the way you think about thinking.
Before You Know It: The Unconscious Reasons We Do What We Do by John A. Bargh (Goodreads Author)
3.97 · Rating details · 788 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35011639-before-you-know-it
Dr. John Bargh, the world’s leading expert on the unconscious mind, presents a “brilliant and convincing book” (Malcolm Gladwell) cited as an outstanding read of 2017 by Business Insider and The Financial Times—giving us an entirely new understanding of the hidden mental processes that secretly govern every aspect of our behavior.
For more than three decades, Dr. John Bargh has conducted revolutionary research into the unconscious mind, research featured in bestsellers like Blink and Thinking Fast and Slow. Now, in what Dr. John Gottman said was “the most important and exciting book in psychology that has been written in the past twenty years,” Dr. Bargh takes us on an entertaining and enlightening tour of the forces that affect everyday behavior while transforming our understanding of ourselves in profound ways.
Dr. Bargh takes us into his labs at New York University and Yale—where he and his colleagues have discovered how the unconscious guides our behavior, goals, and motivations in areas like race relations, parenting, business, consumer behavior, and addiction.
With infectious enthusiasm he reveals what science now knows about the pervasive influence of the unconscious mind in who we choose to date or vote for, what we buy, where we live, how we perform on tests and in job interviews, and much more.
Because the unconscious works in ways we are completely unaware of, Before You Know It is full of surprising and entertaining revelations as well as useful tricks to help you remember items on your to-do list, to shop smarter, and to sleep better.
Before You Know It is “a fascinating compendium of landmark social-psychology research” (Publishers Weekly) and an introduction to a fabulous world that exists below the surface of your awareness and yet is the key to knowing yourself and unlocking new ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving.
Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38315.Fooled_by_Randomness
by Nassim Nicholas Taleb 4.07 · Rating details · 49,010 ratings
Fooled by Randomness is a standalone book in Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s landmark Incerto series, an investigation of opacity, luck, uncertainty, probability, human error, risk, and decision-making in a world we don’t understand.
Philosophy books
Epistemology by Richard Feldman 3.84 · Rating details · 182 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/387295.Epistemology
Sophisticated yet accessible and easy to read, this introduction to contemporary philosophical questions about knowledge and rationality goes beyond the usual bland survey of the major current views to show that there is argument involved. Throughout, the author provides a fair and balanced blending of the standard positions on epistemology with his own carefully reasoned positions or stances into the analysis of each concept. KEY TOPICS: Epistemological Questions. The Traditional Analysis of Knowledge. Modifying the Traditional Analysis of Knowledge. Evidentialist Theories of Justification. Non-evidentialist Theories of Knowledge and Justification. Skepticism. Epistemology and Science. Relativism.
Problems of Knowledge: A Critical Introduction to Epistemology by Michael J. Williams
3.79 · Rating details · 86 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/477904.Problems_of_Knowledge
"What is epistemology or 'the theory of knowledge'? Why does it matter? What makes theorizing about knowledge 'philosophical'? And why do some philosophers argue that epistemology - perhaps even philosophy itself - is dead?" "
In this introduction, Michael Williams answers these questions, showing how epistemological theorizing is sensitive to a range of questions about the nature, limits, methods, and value of knowing.
He pays special attention to the challenge of philosophical scepticism: does our 'knowledge' rest on brute assumptions? Does the rational outlook undermine itself?"
Williams explains and criticizes all the main contemporary philosophical perspectives on human knowledge, such as foundationalism, the coherence theory, and 'naturalistic' theories. As an alternative to all of them, he defends his distinctive contextualist approach.
As well as providing an accessible introduction for any reader approaching the subject for the first time, this book incorporates Williams's own ideas which will be of interest to all philosophers concerned with the theory of knowledge.
Philosophy: The Basics
by Nigel Warburton 3.84 · Rating details · 1,928 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/31854.Philosophy
Now in its fourth edition, Nigel Warburton's best-selling book gently eases the reader into the world of philosophy. Each chapter considers a key area of philosophy, explaining and exploring the basic ideas and themes.
What is philosophy? Can you prove God exists? Is there an afterlife? How do we know right from wrong? Should you ever break the law? Is the world really the way you think it is? How should we define Freedom of Speech? Do you know how science works? Is your mind different from your body? Can you define art? For the fourth edition, Warburton has added new sections to several chapters, revised others and brought the further reading sections up to date. If you've ever asked what is philosophy, or whether the world is really the way you think it is, then this is the book for you.
The Oxford Handbook of Thinking and Reasoning
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/14829260-the-oxford-handbook-of-thinking-and-reasoning
by Keith J. Holyoak (Editor), Robert G. Morrison (Editor)
4.08 · Rating details · 12 ratings
Thinking and reasoning, long the academic province of philosophy, have over the past century emerged as core topics of empirical investigation and theoretical analysis in the modern fields of cognitive psychology, cognitive science, and cognitive neuroscience. Formerly seen as too complicated and amorphous to be included in early textbooks on the science of cognition, the study of thinking and reasoning has since taken off, brancing off in a distinct direction from the field from which it originated.
The Oxford Handbook of Thinking and Reasoning is a comprehensive and authoritative handbook covering all the core topics of the field of thinking and reasoning.
Written by the foremost experts from cognitive psychology, cognitive science, and cognitive neuroscience, individual chapters summarize basic concepts and findings for a major topic, sketch its history, and give a sense of the directions in which research is currently heading.
Chapters include introductions to foundational issues and methods of study in the field, as well as treatment of specific types of thinking and reasoning and their application in a broad range of fields including business, education, law, medicine, music, and science.
The volume will be of interest to scholars and students working in developmental, social and clinical psychology, philosophy, economics, artificial intelligence, education, and linguistics.
Feminist Epistemologies
(Thinking Gender) by Linda Martín Alcoff, Elizabeth Potter 4.14 · Rating details · 43 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/477960.Feminist_Epistemologies
Noticed this review by an evangelical:
"I have found this an immensely suggestive book, collecting as it does essays from both prominent and rising figures in feminist philosophy of knowledge--albeit from about two decades ago. I am struck by how little impact feminist thought, even of this high and generally temperate quality, has had on evangelical theology, to the shame of my guild."
-John
The Honest Truth About Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone - Especially Ourselves by Dan Ariely 3.94 · Rating details · 13,620 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13426114-the-honest-truth-about-dishonesty
The New York Times bestselling author of Predictably Irrational and The Upside of Irrationality returns with thought-provoking work to challenge our preconceptions about dishonesty and urge us to take an honest look at ourselves.
Does the chance of getting caught affect how likely we are to cheat? How do companies pave the way for dishonesty? Does collaboration make us more honest or less so? Does religion improve our honesty?
Most of us think of ourselves as honest, but, in fact, we all cheat.
From Washington to Wall Street, the classroom to the workplace, unethical behavior is everywhere. None of us is immune, whether it's the white lie to head off trouble or padding our expense reports. In The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty, award-winning, bestselling author Dan Ariely turns his unique insight and innovative research to the question of dishonesty.
Generally, we assume that cheating, like most other decisions, is based on a rational cost-benefit analysis.
But Ariely argues, and then demonstrates, that it's actually the irrational forces that we don't take into account that often determine whether we behave ethically or not.
For every Enron or political bribe, there are countless puffed résumés, hidden commissions, and knockoff purses. In The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty, Ariely shows why some things are easier to lie about; how getting caught matters less than we think; and how business practices pave the way for unethical behavior, both intentionally and unintentionally. Ariely explores how unethical behavior works in the personal, professional, and political worlds, and how it affects all of us, even as we think of ourselves as having high moral standards.
But all is not lost. Ariely also identifies what keeps us honest, pointing the way for achieving higher ethics in our everyday lives. With compelling personal and academic findings, The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty will change the way we see ourselves, our actions, and others.
The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
by Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan (Goodreads Author)
4.27 · Rating details · 59,893 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17349.The_Demon_Haunted_World
How can we make intelligent decisions about our increasingly technology-driven lives if we don’t understand the difference between the myths of pseudoscience and the testable hypotheses of science? Pulitzer Prize-winning author and distinguished astronomer Carl Sagan argues that scientific thinking is critical not only to the pursuit of truth but to the very well-being of our democratic institutions.
Casting a wide net through history and culture, Sagan examines and authoritatively debunks such celebrated fallacies of the past as witchcraft, faith healing, demons, and UFOs. And yet, disturbingly, in today's so-called information age, pseudoscience is burgeoning with stories of alien abduction, channeling past lives, and communal hallucinations commanding growing attention and respect. As Sagan demonstrates with lucid eloquence, the siren song of unreason is not just a cultural wrong turn but a dangerous plunge into darkness that threatens our most basic freedoms.
What Is the Name of This Book?
by Raymond M. Smullyan
4.24 · Rating details · 757 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/493576.What_Is_the_Name_of_This_Book_
If you're intrigued by puzzles and paradoxes, these 200 mind-bending logic puzzles, riddles, and diversions will thrill you with challenges to your powers of reason and common sense. Raymond M. Smullyan — a celebrated mathematician, logician, magician, and author — presents a logical labyrinth of more than 200 increasingly complex problems. The puzzles delve into Gödel’s undecidability theorem and other examples of the deepest paradoxes of logic and set theory. Detailed solutions follow each puzzle
The Art of Logic in an Illogical World
by Eugenia Cheng 3.55 · Rating details · 740 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38400400-the-art-of-logic-in-an-illogical-world
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.
How to Think about Weird Things: Critical Thinking for a New Age
by Theodore Schick Jr. Lewis Vaughn, Martin Gardner (Foreword)
4.00 · Rating details · 530 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41756.How_to_Think_about_Weird_Things
This text serves well as a supplemental text in:

critical thinking
logic
introduction to philosophy
philosophy of science
epistemology
metaphysics
introduction to psychology
anomalistic psychology
perception and cognition

How to measure your own level of uncertainty in a conclusion or belief
Calculate Bayes theorem and understand what it's useful for
Find the posterior, likelihood, and prior to check the accuracy of your conclusions
Calculate distributions to see the range of your data
Compare hypotheses and draw reliable conclusions from them

Next time you find yourself with a sheaf of survey results and no idea what to do with them, turn to Bayesian Statistics the Fun Way to get the most value from your data.
Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions
by Brian Christian (Goodreads Author), Tom Griffiths (Goodreads Author)
4.15 · Rating details · 19,580 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25666050-algorithms-to-live-by
A fascinating exploration of how insights from computer algorithms can be applied to our everyday lives, helping to solve common decision-making problems and illuminate the workings of the human mind
All our lives are constrained by limited space and time, limits that give rise to a particular set of problems. What should we do, or leave undone, in a day or a lifetime? How much messiness should we accept? What balance of new activities and familiar favorites is the most fulfilling? These may seem like uniquely human quandaries, but they are not: computers, too, face the same constraints, so computer scientists have been grappling with their version of such issues for decades. And the solutions they've found have much to teach us.
In a dazzlingly interdisciplinary work, acclaimed author Brian Christian and cognitive scientist Tom Griffiths show how the algorithms used by computers can also untangle very human questions. They explain how to have better hunches and when to leave things to chance, how to deal with overwhelming choices and how best to connect with others. From finding a spouse to finding a parking spot, from organizing one's inbox to understanding the workings of memory, Algorithms to Live By transforms the wisdom of computer science into strategies for human living.
The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World
by David Deutsch 4.12 · Rating details · 5,026 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10483171-the-beginning-of-infinity
The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World
In this book David Deutsch argue that all progress, both theoretical and practical, has resulted from a single human activity: the quest for what I call good explanations. Though this quest is uniquely human, its effectiveness is also a fundamental fact about reality at the most impersonal cosmic level – namely that it conforms to universal laws of nature that are indeed good explanations. This simple relationship between the cosmic and the human is a hint of a central role of people in the cosmic scheme of things.
A Field Guide to Lies: Critical Thinking with Statistics and the Scientific Method
by Daniel J. Levitin
3.76 · Rating details · 3,181 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28504537-a-field-guide-to-lies
From The New York Times bestselling author of THE ORGANIZED MIND and THIS IS YOUR BRAIN ON MUSIC, a primer to the critical thinking that is more necessary now than ever.
We are bombarded with more information each day than our brains can process—especially in election season. It's raining bad data, half-truths, and even outright lies. New York Times bestselling author Daniel J. Levitin shows how to recognize misleading announcements, statistics, graphs, and written reports revealing the ways lying weasels can use them.
It's becoming harder to separate the wheat from the digital chaff. How do we distinguish misinformation, pseudo-facts, distortions, and outright lies from reliable information?
Levitin groups his field guide into two categories—statistical infomation and faulty arguments—ultimately showing how science is the bedrock of critical thinking.
Infoliteracy means understanding that there are hierarchies of source quality and bias that variously distort our information feeds via every media channel, including social media.
We may expect newspapers, bloggers, the government, and Wikipedia to be factually and logically correct, but they so often aren't.
We need to think critically about the words and numbers we encounter if we want to be successful at work, at play, and in making the most of our lives.
This means checking the plausibility and reasoning—not passively accepting information, repeating it, and making decisions based on it.
Readers learn to avoid the extremes of passive gullibility and cynical rejection. Levitin's charming, entertaining, accessible guide can help anyone wake up to a whole lot of things that aren't so. And catch some lying weasels in their tracks!
"Levitin is brilliant. Everyone should read A Field Guide to Lies."—Chris Matthews
"Eloquent."—The Los Angeles Review of Books
“Mr. Levitin is the perfect guide...If everyone could adopt the level of healthy statistical skepticism that Mr. Levitin would like, political debate would be in much better shape.”—The Economist
"The timing could not be better … for Daniel J. Levitin’s new book… a survival manual for the post-factual era…in the struggle against error and ignorance, lies and mistakes, he is both engaging and rewarding."—Literary Review of Canada
"Who knew that a book about statistics could be so riveting!"—Dallas Public Library
"Confirmation bias is a growing problem in the digital information age. As Daniel Levitin writes, our brain is a giant pattern detector. If we read something that coincides with what we already believe we're more likely to give it credence, while the opposite is not true…The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it."—John Cleese

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Squishy Makeover: Fixing Your Squishies #17 - YouTube

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