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A review by alok_pandey
How to Think: A Survival Guide for a World at Odds by Alan Jacobs
4.0
I came across Prof. Alan Jacobs while reading an article written by him in The Atlantic. He is a conservative(as per the currently prevailing definitions) and was advocating against having dedicated conservative universities as a remedy to counter the existing liberal bias in the academia. This intellectual integrity is pretty uncommon these days, and quite hard to nurture and sustain even for one's own self.
This book helped me understand him further. Reason and ideology have often been perceived as anti-thesis to each other. Ideology is notorious for making people blind to reason. Reading Prof. Jacobs allowed me to accept a possibility that reason can be used to refine ideology. Ideology is nothing but a set of ideas, a framework we use to look at the outer world, interpret and understand it, and consequentially respond to it. Now what better tool than reason, to sharpen those ideas.
But Prof. Jacobs also criticises blind adherence to reason as well. Even sticking to reason needs to pass the test of reasonability.
Prof. Jacobs writes about usual conflicts we are witnessing today in the world of communication - needlessly fiery debates, acrimonious online/offline scuffles, raging competitive battles between ideological sects, etc. - and he attributes most of them to the root cause of 'not thinking properly'.
There are a lot of barriers, voluntary and involuntary, that impede the process of effective and efficient thinking. These could be psychological, sociological or even techno-structural. He addresses all these in a systematic manner, providing plenty of real-life examples.
What I found refreshing is that the book doesn't do all this using routine list of confirmation/logical biases and associated jargon. Jacobs uses a mix of theories and stories sprinkled with his own observations on how humans think and how they ought to be. He also demolishes some established axioms and does reasonably well.
Most of the work surely looked derivative, sourced/inspired from other works but I won't hold that against Jacobs. A lot has been done already in the field, and numerous articles are being dumped everywhere on similar topics everyday. What this book does so well is putting many of those in context and then adding some unconventional take on the same. It's a worthwhile read that I will definitely like to revisit again soon.
This book helped me understand him further. Reason and ideology have often been perceived as anti-thesis to each other. Ideology is notorious for making people blind to reason. Reading Prof. Jacobs allowed me to accept a possibility that reason can be used to refine ideology. Ideology is nothing but a set of ideas, a framework we use to look at the outer world, interpret and understand it, and consequentially respond to it. Now what better tool than reason, to sharpen those ideas.
But Prof. Jacobs also criticises blind adherence to reason as well. Even sticking to reason needs to pass the test of reasonability.
Prof. Jacobs writes about usual conflicts we are witnessing today in the world of communication - needlessly fiery debates, acrimonious online/offline scuffles, raging competitive battles between ideological sects, etc. - and he attributes most of them to the root cause of 'not thinking properly'.
There are a lot of barriers, voluntary and involuntary, that impede the process of effective and efficient thinking. These could be psychological, sociological or even techno-structural. He addresses all these in a systematic manner, providing plenty of real-life examples.
What I found refreshing is that the book doesn't do all this using routine list of confirmation/logical biases and associated jargon. Jacobs uses a mix of theories and stories sprinkled with his own observations on how humans think and how they ought to be. He also demolishes some established axioms and does reasonably well.
Most of the work surely looked derivative, sourced/inspired from other works but I won't hold that against Jacobs. A lot has been done already in the field, and numerous articles are being dumped everywhere on similar topics everyday. What this book does so well is putting many of those in context and then adding some unconventional take on the same. It's a worthwhile read that I will definitely like to revisit again soon.