Stop Being Reasonable: six stories of how we really change our minds

Product Information

You aren’t alone in feeling this way. But the world does constrain our choices – every day we have to make decisions about what we’ll sacrifice in exchange for something else. The key to not letting that fact erode you is being able to recognise yourself in what is decided.

So an atheist is not going to be rationally persuaded to join a religious cult, and a member of a religious cult is not going to be rationally persuaded to become an atheist. But if these two people marry each other, it's quite possible that one of them will change because they love each other, and they don't want to have incompatible beliefs. The reassuring stuff first: lots of people do things in their teenage years that are mortifying to them years later. Getting an identity can feel like an urgent task during adolescence, as though if I throw on the regalia of being This Kind of Person then I’ll have the things I’m actually in need of, like self-understanding, or attractiveness, or independence. A lot of people try on all kinds of guises, from goths to young toastmasters, then shed them again before adulthood. Unfortunately reasoned conversation or punitive cutting-off are only rarely tools of conversion McLaughlin was lauded for her inventiveness in getting students engaged. “Finding creative ways to deliver historical material comes so naturally to Hannah, because creativity and originality are integral elements of her personality,” one student wrote. Evelyn Navarro Salazar At TEC, we firmly believe ethics is a team sport. It’s a conversation about how we should act, live, treat others and be treated in return. In addition, Christopher Parton from the Department of Music was honored with the Quin Morton Graduate Teaching Award for instructors in the Princeton Writing Program, and Jeewon Yoo from the Department of English was recognized with the Collaborative Teaching Initiative (CTI) Graduate Teaching Award. Eleanor Gordon-Smith

Stop Being Reasonable

The awardees are Eleanor Gordon-Smith from the Department of Philosophy, Nicolas Hommel from the Department of Economics, Hannah McLaughlin from the Department of Music, Evelyn Navarro Salazar from the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, Calvin Spolar from the Department of Chemistry, Aaron Su from the Department of Anthropology, William Wen from the Department of Politics, and Jessica Ye from the Princeton Neuroscience Institute.

The second thing you’d get from reflecting on why you want this is a more productive conversation with your wife. She might have legitimate objections to the particulars here (if it’s actually motorcycling, the risks; if it’s a sex thing, monogamy). And she might be entitled to hold on to them. But if you can tell her what you want to feel, whether it’s excited or invigorated or like your own person again, it’s a lot harder to just say “nope”. What made them change course? How should their reversals affect how we think about our own beliefs? And in an increasingly divided world, what do they teach us about how we might change the minds of others?It is sometimes held that rationality defines us as human, a claim written into our species name, Homo sapiens. If this is right, it follows from Gordon-Smith’s witty, intelligent book that, like the people she profiles, we do not really know who, or even what, we are. Your wife already knows that her relationship with her mother is strained. If it were a relationship of absolute trust and adoration, and while fully compos mentis her mother had said unexpectedly terrible things, your wife’s life might change a lot if she knew what her mother really thought. But in this case, knowing the exact details of what her mother said doesn’t sound like it would be a massive reversal. It would be one more painful piece of proof of what she already knows. Then the book shifts into a series of case studies of people who did change their minds in different scenarios. Each of these stories is fascinating and well-written. Inspiring, moving and perceptive,Stop Being Reasonable is a mind-changing exploration of the murky place where philosophy and real life meet. Perhaps you could make room for some of that hurt – how did the (known) infidelities affect her; does she wish she’d done anything differently? You could do so in a way that gently insists it’s a temporary stopping point on the way to letting go, and that you won’t be doing any factual digging.

Everyone I know is irrational, and I want to fix them. (c) An expo on rationality, its uses and misuses. You are about to read a series of true stories about people who changed their minds while under the kind of pressure that gives a person the bends. Many of them tell their stories here for the first time. Overall, I agree with the author that people are motivated by emotion, relationships, and their sense of self (especially the person's values). Few people are truly motivated by reason. I think that's because the question of how a person should live their life is not a question that can be answered logically. There is no logical formula for living a good life. Given the choice of one or the other, I think just about everyone would choose to be happy over being reasonable. Students were grateful to Hommel for his proactive assistance and well-organized material. One called him “the most helpful, patient and understanding preceptor I've had. He did not just give answers — he worked to make sure everyone understood the topics on a fundamental level. It would have been a much more difficult — and much less pleasant — class without him.” Hannah McLaughlinThe book begins with an account of a rather fascinating experiment that Gordon-Smith conducted, where she asked men who catcalled her on the street why they engaged in that behavior. Many of the men insisted the women liked being catcalled, and Gordon-Smith became fascinated with her inability to convince these men that no, women do not. No amount of personal anecdote or researched evidence could convince these men. Professor of Philosophy Sarah McGrath recalls watching Gordon-Smith deliver “the most effective undergraduate lecture I have ever seen anyone give anywhere, ever, on any topic. I believe that I saw Princeton undergraduate students fall in love with philosophy there before my eyes that morning.”