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One astonishing possible explanation for the function of reason only emerged about ten years ago: the argumentative hypothesisfn5 suggests reason arose in the human brain not to inform our actions and beliefs, but to explain and defend them to others. In other words, it is an adaptation necessitated by our being a highly social species. We may use reason to detect lying in others, to resolve disputes, to attempt to influence other people or to explain our actions in retrospect, but it seems not to play the decisive role in individual decision-making.

Decision-making based on emotional intuition, without the aid of reason to keep it in line, pretty much always sucks. You know who bases their entire lives on their emotions? Three-year-old kids. And dogs. You know what else three-year-olds and dogs do? Shit on the carpet.

If your view of the world is that people use reason for their important decisions, you are setting yourself up for a life of frustration and confusion. You'll find yourself continually debating people and never winning except in your own mind. Few things are as destructive and limiting as a worldview that assumes people are mostly rational.

If this book provides you with nothing else, I hope it gives you permission to suggest slightly silly things from time to time. To fail a little more often. To think unlike an economist. There are many problems which are logic-proof, and which will never be solved by the kind of people who aspire to go to the World Economic Forum at Davos.fn3 Remember the story of those envelopes.

reason seems to have given us remarkable advantages over other animals - and it is unlikely that we could have produced many of our technological and cultural successes without it.

if we allow the world to be run by logical people, we will only discover logical things. But in real life, most things aren't logical - they are psycho-logical.

The human mind does not run on logic any more than a horse runs on petrol.