Alexander’s Reviews > Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress > Status Update

"Indeed, it’s a fallacy to think that people “need resources” [...] They need ways of growing food, moving around, lighting their homes, displaying information, and other sources of well-being. They satisfy these needs with ideas: with recipes, formulas, techniques, blueprints, and algorithms for manipulating the physical world to give them what they want. The human mind, with its recursive combinatorial power."

"But trial and error is a profusely branching tree of possibilities, most of which lead nowhere, and the tree can be pruned by the application of science, accelerating the rate of discovery."

There is a rumour going around claiming that this book preaches climate denial. False. The context is in chapter 3:
"Of course, no informed person can deny that damage to natural systems from human activity has been harmful and that if we do nothing about it, the damage could become catastrophic."
Pinker is simply saying that the hysteria and disregard for human wellbeing in the name of climate change is unpragmatic.

This is an exceptional book and I am indulging in reading it with utmost delight. I'm not too far into it and already in love!

This book is within the sweet spot of books I love reading but the reason I am only reading it now is that I was discouraged from reading it by the anti-rational mod.