书籍介绍
这不是一本让人痛快的打脸手册。它真正追问的是：为什么偏偏是我们？作者把目光从荒诞的信念本身移开，转而追问人心——对确定性的渴望、对永生的执念、面对死亡时的战栗，如何让人在占卜师与通灵者面前交出批判力。更锋利的是，它解释聪明人为何同样容易上当：进化赋予我们寻找因果联系的能力，而这套机制天生偏爱'假阳性'——宁可错认，也不放过。于是空屋的响动成了闹鬼，火星上的阴影成了圣母。全书三层递进，从希望、到思维如何出错、再到特定情境下的出错。它不满足于嘲笑迷信者，而是邀请你理解错误如何如此合乎人性。适合那些不愿停留在'我太聪明了不会被骗'的人。
作者简介
Michael Shermer is the author of The Moral Arc, Why People Believe Weird Things, The Believing Brain, and several other books on the evolution of human beliefs and behavior. He is the founding publisher of Skeptic magazine, the editor of Skeptic.com, a monthly columnist for Scientific American, and Presidential Fellow at Chapman University. He lives in Southern California.
AI导读
核心看点
- 本书深入剖析人类为何会相信超自然现象、阴谋论及伪科学，指出这并非源于智力低下，而是人类进化出的寻找事物间关联的本能，以及在面对死亡恐惧与不确定性时，对精神慰藉和永恒希望的心理需求。
- 作者系统梳理了思维出错的三大层级：因希望而盲目、一般性认知偏差及特定逻辑谬误。书中强调科学进步的本质在于通过不断证伪来积累可靠知识，并教导读者如何通过质疑证据质量、核查主张者资质来抵御伪科学诱惑。
- 作为怀疑论者的经典之作，本书不仅揭露了各种荒谬主张，更倡导一种理性的批判精神。它提醒读者，真正的怀疑论不是嘲讽他人，而是理解错误产生的社会文化根源，从而更客观地认识世界，避免陷入非理性思维的陷阱。
读者共识
- 读者普遍认为本书前几章质量极高，深刻揭示了人类心理弱点与伪科学泛滥的关联，具有极强的警示意义。但后半部分被批评为啰嗦、案例重复且琐碎，导致整体阅读体验下降，部分读者认为其重点分散，未能始终保持高水平的论述。
- 许多读者指出，书中关于批判性思维、证据评估及科学方法论的教导极具价值，有助于提升个人独立思考能力。然而，也有批评声音认为作者态度傲慢，缺乏对信仰者的人文关怀，且部分翻译版本质量低劣，严重影响了原著思想的准确传达。
- 尽管存在争议，读者仍认可本书在揭露思维陷阱、普及科学精神方面的贡献。大家共识在于，不应简单嘲笑相信怪诞事物的人，而应反思自身思维漏洞。本书作为了解人类非理性行为成因的入门读物，其核心警示意义仍值得肯定。
精彩摘录
- "怀疑论者恰恰就热衷于去揭露那些胡说八道的异端邪说。意识到别人荒谬的逻辑推理是件很开心的事，但这不是问题的主旨所在。作为怀疑论者和具有批判精神的思想家，我们不应受情绪的干扰，而要试着去了解别人出错的原因，弄明白社会和文化传统对科学所产生的影响，只有这样我们才能更地了解世界发展的规律。 荷兰哲学家巴鲁克-斯宾诺莎说：“我曾进行过不懈的努力，其目的不是去嘲弄、哀叹或讥笑人们的某种行为，而是试着去了解他们。”"
- "Hope springs eternal in the human breast; Man never Is, but always To be blest. The soul, uneasy, and confin'd from home, Rest and expatiates in a life to come."
- "This hope is what drives all of us -skeptics and believers alike- to be compelled by unsolved mysteries, to seek spiritual meaning in a physical universe, desire immortality, and wish that our hopes for eternity may be fulfilled."
- "Life is contingent and filled with uncertainties, the most frightening of which is the manner, time, and place of our own demise. Under the pressure of reality, we become credulous. We seek reassuring certainties from fortune-tellers and palm-readers, astrologers and psychics. Our critical faculties"
- "three tiers why people believe weird things:(1) because hope springs eternal;(2) because thinking can go wrong in general ways;(3) because thinking can go wrong in particular ways."
- "Humans evolved the ability to seek and find connections between things and events in the environment (snakes with rattles should be avoided), and those who made the best connections left behind the most offspring. We are their descendants. The problem is that causal thinking is not infallible. We ma"
- "Balance can be found by answering a few basic questions: What is the quality of the evidence for the claim? What are the background and credentials of the person making the claim? Does the thing work as claimed?"
- ""One of the characteristics that sets man apart from all the other animals (and animal he indubitably is) is a need for knowledge for its own sake.""
用户评论
I Am therefore I THINK
:无
前几章是五星水平
Mostly the book is interesting to read. But some materials used are not familiar to my background, so it's difficult to get the points sometimes.
成也栗子，败也栗子。其中有很多调查报告和数据，但是有的栗子太冗长和琐碎了些。 @2014-04-23 04:45:07
下载
收藏