Elizabeth Kolbert, The New Yorker
Elizabeth Kolbert reviews three books that explain how this alarming tendency evolved and how it might be corrected.
Sociability is the key to how the human mind functions or, perhaps more pertinently, malfunctions. Reason developed not to enable us to solve abstract, logical problems or even to help us draw conclusions from unfamiliar data; rather, it developed to resolve the problems posed by living in collaborative groups, where agreement and stability were crucial. Invariably in-depth understanding leads to more flexible thinking.