Steven Poole criticises doubters of human rationality by lauding the virtues of “public reason”, which supposedly ensures that “any one thinker can be corrected”. It is true that collaborative and, indeed, disputatious reasoning is vital—and the “nudge” theorists he snipes at have never impressed me—but the idea that our societies are efficient self-correcting organisms is plain false. Some influential people think that climate change is a dire threat, for example, and others that it is a mere sham. Some think that state redistribution is key to a functioning society and others that the state is an abomination. Some influential people think that Gods exist and others that there is nothing beyond the material of life. To make sense of the world, intelligent people have to use their own powers of reasoning, and should be aware of their limitations.
Steven Poole criticises doubters of human rationality by lauding the virtues of “public reason”, which supposedly ensures that “any one thinker can be corrected”. It is true that collaborative and, indeed, disputatious reasoning is vital—and the “nudge” theorists he snipes at have never impressed me—but the idea that our societies are efficient self-correcting organisms is plain false. Some influential people think that climate change is a dire threat, for example, and others that it is a mere sham. Some think that state redistribution is key to a functioning society and others that the state is an abomination. Some influential people think that Gods exist and others that there is nothing beyond the material of life. To make sense of the world, intelligent people have to use their own powers of reasoning, and should be aware of their limitations.