Popular
Rationality: From AI to Zombies
This book is a distillation of Eliezer Yudkowsky’s “sequences” on human thought and rationality. It’s intended to serve both as an introduction to thinking about thinking and as a resource for people interested in digging deeper into epistemology, metacognition, and how to be less wrong.
The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don't
In The Scout Mindset, CFAR co-founder Julia Galef describes why and how to embrace a scout mindset, a stance of curiosity and openness to evidence, in contrast to soldier mindset, a combative approach that resists evidence. It covers topics such as how to notice bias, how to change your mind, and how to inspire others without deception.
Thinking, Fast and Slow
In the 1970s, Daniel Kahneman co-founded the study of cognitive biases. Now a Nobel laureate, he summarizes his life’s work and the subfields of psychology and economics he helped create. This is an engaging book about the causes of human error, written by the field’s most prestigious researcher. (Although some of the work he cites failed replication.)
Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction
New York Times bestselling author and professor Phillip Tetlock explains the habits of the best people in the world at predicting the outcomes to uncertain events.
Focusing
Psychologist Eugene Gendlin teaches an advanced introspection technique he calls Focusing. It's used to access the very edges of what you're thinking and feeling, to discover beliefs and connections that are difficult to access analytically.
Academic
Rationality and the Reflective Mind
Keith Stanovich’s model of human bias and how it might be meliorated is perhaps the most advanced in the field, and nowhere is this model better explained and defended than in this book.
Rational Choice in an Uncertain World, 2nd edition
A textbook on judgment and decision making.
Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases
Gilovich, Griffin, and Kahneman deep dive into shortcuts and systematic errors in judgement made by people in uncertain situations.
Staff Picks
Nonviolent Communication
In this internationally acclaimed text, Marshall Rosenberg offers insightful stories, anecdotes, practical exercises and role-plays that will dramatically change your approach to communication for the better.
Gödel, Escher, Bach
By looking at the brilliant minds of mathematician Kurt Godel, graphic artist M. C. Escher, and composer Johann Sebastian Bach, computer-science and cognitive-science professor Douglas Hofstadter ties together the aesthetic gift of pattern recognition and manipulation with theories on artificial intelligence, human intelligence, and the essence of self-awareness.
Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality
Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality is a work of alternate-universe Harry Potter fan-fiction wherein Petunia Evans has married an Oxford biochemistry professor and young genius Harry grows up fascinated by science and science fiction. When he finds out that he is a wizard, he tries to apply scientific principles to his study of magic, with sometimes surprising results.
Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre
Switch off the no-saying intellect and welcome the unconscious as a friend: it will lead you places you never dreamed of, and produce results more 'original' than anything you could achieve by aiming at originality.
Inner Game of Tennis
An exploration into the importance of the subconscious mind in learning and teaching skills through the lens of tennis.
Bonds that Make Us Free
An interesting take on how reinforcing patterns of self-deception disrupt relationships, and what to do about it. Grounded in religious philosophy rather than cognitive science, but several of us found it life-changing.