Forbes Top 50 Social Media Leader 300,000+ followers, Chris Voss is the CEO/Editor of The Chris Voss Show, Consulting Firm. Author, Podcaster, Speaker, 35+ years as a serial entrepreneur

Chris Voss Podcast – Irrationality: A History of the Dark Side of Reason by Justin E. H. Smith

Irrationality: A History of the Dark Side of Reason by Justin E. H. Smith
Jehsmith.com

A fascinating history that reveals the ways in which the pursuit of rationality often leads to an explosion of irrationality

It’s a story we can’t stop telling ourselves. Once, humans were benighted by superstition and irrationality, but then the Greeks invented reason. Later, the Enlightenment enshrined rationality as the supreme value. Discovering that reason is the defining feature of our species, we named ourselves the “rational animal.” But is this flattering story itself rational? In this sweeping account of irrationality from antiquity to today―from the fifth-century BC murder of Hippasus for revealing the existence of irrational numbers to the rise of Twitter mobs and the election of Donald Trump―Justin Smith says the evidence suggests the opposite. From sex and music to religion and war, irrationality makes up the greater part of human life and history.

Rich and ambitious, Irrationality ranges across philosophy, politics, and current events. Challenging conventional thinking about logic, natural reason, dreams, art and science, pseudoscience, the Enlightenment, the internet, jokes and lies, and death, the book shows how history reveals that any triumph of reason is temporary and reversible, and that rational schemes, notably including many from Silicon Valley, often result in their polar opposite. The problem is that the rational gives birth to the irrational and vice versa in an endless cycle, and any effort to permanently set things in order sooner or later ends in an explosion of unreason. Because of this, it is irrational to try to eliminate irrationality. For better or worse, it is an ineradicable feature of life.

Illuminating unreason at a moment when the world appears to have gone mad again, Irrationality is fascinating, provocative, and timely.

Justin E. H. Smith is a professor of history and philosophy of science at the University of Paris. He is the author of Divine Machines: Leibniz and the Sciences of Life (2011), Nature, Human Nature, and Human Difference: Race in Early Modern Philosophy (2015), The Philosopher: A History in Six Types (2016), and Irrationality: A History of the Dark Side of Reason (2019), all published with Princeton University Press. He is an editor-at-large of Cabinet Magazine. The main-belt asteroid 13585 Justinsmith was named after him in 2015.

Chris Voss

Top 1% Global Podcaster, Forbes Top 50 recognized, CEO/Host of The Chris Voss Show Podcast, Author, Consultant, Speaker, Youtuber, Coach, Many Awards, Media Audience over 24 millions views. 35+ Year Serial Entrepreneur.

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